


the simple math of family

by sexonastick



Category: RWBY
Genre: Bratty Birds, F/M, Found Family, Gen, Implied Background Ships for Most of Team STRQ, M/M, So Many Metaphors Oh No, Team as Family, The Exact Character Death You'd Expect - Yes That One, Vytal Festival, actual family
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-27
Updated: 2019-12-27
Packaged: 2021-02-26 04:33:10
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 33,385
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21927493
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sexonastick/pseuds/sexonastick
Summary: There are many different ways of living, all over Remnant. The one constant for the Branwen twins has always been family.
Comments: 19
Kudos: 74





	1. one and one

**Author's Note:**

  * For [mermaiddrunk](https://archiveofourown.org/users/mermaiddrunk/gifts).



> This is a secret santa request. I wanted to write you the Qrow fic of your dreams, but alas I am an overly ambitious ass who tried to pull off way too much in too little time, but I do hope this comes close to giving you maybe some of your momentary fancies if not all the dreams. Very Merry Christmas!
> 
> Additional note for everyone: I very seldom write canon compliant fic, because I find the process of making sure I'm not contradicting anything really stressful and exhausting, so please be forgiving if I made some dumb mistakes as I hurtled toward the finish line.

*

The tribe is everything.

Even in the freedom that they all enjoy, there is consistency and ritual. There’s a rhythm to their life, a chorus of heartbeats and lives drawn together. At sunrise, they eat as one, so someone has to make the meal. The twins are too young to tend to the flames or use the knives, but they can scrub the bowls to clean up after. Everyone is useful, in their own way. 

There isn’t the normal schooling that they’re told other children all across Mistral have to suffer through. The only history of Remnant they need to know is what’s unfolding right in front of them. They learn about Dust by using it. Their math is always one and one, us or them. 

All sorts of people stumble their way across the path of the tribe, and all of them — from a military leader to a simple baker — fit into a cage exactly the same way, and there they remain until someone comes along to pay for their freedom. This is the truest history of all of the Kingdoms, and they learn it as they go. _“It’s the constant battle between having and not.”_

Because they carry their weapons with them — alongside the might of their tribe — they always have. The people who travel the roads all on their own, without protection, they have not. 

It’s simple. The clearest lessons to learn.

One and one. Us and them.

The only thing easier is tree climbing, even if branches sometimes snap off in Qrow’s hand long before he’s put most of his weight on them. The first time it happens, with a sharp crack of the wood, he lands from so high up that his arm snaps too. 

Just like that.

It’s a loud sound followed by soft whimpers and his sister standing over him, nudging him sharply with the toe of her too big boots handed down to her from another member of their tribe who recently outgrew them. “Get up. Don’t act like a baby.”

They are both five already, and no longer babies at all, but his arm still hurts like nothing else he’s felt before. “I’m not a baby,” he shouts, his voice wet with tears that make him feel exactly like the young child he no longer wants to be. He tries to push himself back to his feet, through the use of his arm, but immediately recoils. The pain is too intense. He clenches his jaw so sharply that he bites his own tongue. 

It starts to bleed. 

“You’re a curse.” Raven sighs but offers him her hand. He hesitates at first, but takes it. “If I could bring you up to me, I would, but you’re going to have to figure out your own way.”

Eventually, he does. 

The arm heals, and so do the bruises. His wounded pride is slower to fix, but after falling enough he starts to care less and less each time. Falling is just the first step in standing up again. 

Over time, the little wounds start to hurt less. 

Maybe he’s used to it. The way the branches scratch his face as he climbs through them, faster and higher, don’t bother him as much as it did in the beginning. He swats them away from his eyes, and focuses on the distant horizon. From the perches up in the treetops, Qrow feels like he can see all of Mistral laid out at his feet. 

The members of their tribe and the camp they currently call home look so small and far away.

The only thing that’s really real is his sister close to his side, glaring at a nearby bird. “It’s giving us away,” she says while gripping the branch underneath them especially tight. “Maybe I should kill it.”

“Raven.”

“I bet I could move fast enough to snap its neck. That’d shut it up.” 

“Don’t act so insane.” Qrow shakes his head. “Other people might think you mean it.”

She stomps her foot against the branch, shaking it so hard that the bird takes off and bright leaves scatter all around them. “Maybe other people know me better than you do.”

*

They are all of eight years old the first time their home leaves and they’re old enough to help. Someone has to dig the stakes from the ground, bundle them up, and carry them to the wagons and bikes. It’s slow and sweaty work, taking most of the day, and by the time they’re finished even Raven looks exhausted.

Though she does not admit it. 

She just sits down in the dirt (heavily) and breathes through her flared nostrils while frowning at the mud caked halfway up her arms. Whichever stakes didn’t want to be lifted out with the proper tools had to be dug lose by hand. They weren’t allowed to leave anything behind; it would be wasteful. 

“Hey,” Qrow starts softly, nudging her with his shoulder. “You doing okay? Do you want some water?”

“To drown you with?” 

He laughs, but she doesn’t. 

She’s almost smiling, though, and that’s nearly enough. “I’ll go get us both water.”

“In a little while.” With a sharp kick to the back of Qrow’s ankle, Raven sends him sprawling into the dirt. She doesn’t miss a second, not a moment of hesitation at all, before laying herself out next to him with a smile slowly spreading over her face. “Now, we rest.” 

He grunts once, not quite agreement, but doesn’t move either.

*

When they make camp at their new home, it’s hours of work before anyone can rest. There’s drying sweat and dirt running down into Qrow’s eyes and sending shivers down his back now that the sun’s nearly set.

“I don’t understand,” he says to no one in particular, except Raven who is the only one close enough to listen; even if she’s pretending not to hear. The lack of a response doesn’t stop him. He’s fine with speaking louder. “If we live how we want and do whatever we please, why is there so much work?”

There’s no answer at first except for the rhythmic sound of hammering. 

In the distance, he can hear the night birds starting their calls. Animals will be out soon, and they have to finish the first layer of their defenses. 

Knowing that, Qrow joins them, continuing to work until his muscles feel like they’re on fire. It’s only when he tries to pass his sister — on his way to the truck, for more stakes — that she reaches out and grabs hold of him by the shirt collar, none too gently. “We do together, for ourselves.” It’s something the elder members of the tribe all say, those that are still alive. 

Qrow still doesn’t know what it means. “I still don’t have _any_ idea what that means.”

Raven sneers and pushes him away, in the direction of the truck. “Our rules are our own and so are the rewards.” She tosses the hammer into the air and catches it again. “You’d understand if you listened in class.” 

“I listen,” Qrow says, unconvincing and not entirely convinced himself. He frowns and rolls his shoulder, working out the tension from both a long day’s work and being manhandled by his sister, doing his best not to stomp his feet too much as he trails after her toward the truck. “Hearing something doesn’t mean it always makes sense.”

Raven shrugs. “I understand it fine.” She hands a bundle of stakes to him before taking her own. “If we had to live the way the rest of Remnant does, we’d go insane.” 

“Pretty sure you’re already there.”

At the last minute, she adds her own stack of wood on top of his, nearly toppling him over. 

Maybe he deserves that, but probably not. 

“You could talk less.” She bumps against him with the pointed edge of one of the sticks, and it definitely doesn’t feel like an accident. “Listen more.”

Qrow winces, and nearly drops his bundle, but manages to recover. Barely. But before he can make any kind of smart remark, she’s already back to working at the frontline of the barricade.

It’s probably for the best. 

The calls of the wildlife are getting louder, and any more bickering would only bring Grimm.

*

After a long hard day and night of work, it’s the most restful sleep Qrow has ever had.

Every time.

 _Honest work_ , he thinks.

*

The people of Mistral are not honest. That’s one thing he’s learned when he listens in class. They steal from their neighbor and work for the sake of masters when they only want to take for themselves. Everyone, given the time and understanding, wants.

But honest people take. 

The first time they go out on a job, they’re driven to the edge of the nearest town and told to find what they can, then to meet back here end of day. 

“Don’t come back empty handed,” the elder says before spitting on the ground.

Raven makes a rude gesture at him, but Qrow barely notices. He’s too busy studying the city laid out ahead of them. The streets are busy, filled with people, most of them with their purses and pockets right around head height.

Everyone in the tribe gets their first chance when they’re just the right height for taking.

*

That first day is easier for Qrow than his sister. She’s too angry, too anxious and obvious. Her hands are never still and the hate never completely leaves her face.

But Qrow knows when to smile at the ladies in the street. “Oh, aren’t you a sweet boy?” one says, her walk slowing as she takes in every part of him. She studies his dirty clothes and the circles under his eyes, and there’s pity there, on her face. “Are you lost?”

He hates sometimes too, but he does a better job hiding it. He smiles instead. “Yes, ma’am.” He moves closer to her, his eyes scanning the street quickly. “I think so…” 

While he distracts, Raven takes. It’s teamwork at its finest.

She cuts the woman’s purse and takes almost too much, but when the woman stares too long at the tears at the hem of Qrow’s sleeves, he doesn’t think he cares at all what she loses today. Some people should learn to mind their own selves first. 

Most of the people of Mistral, in fact, could learn that lesson. They make it almost too easy. 

There’s just so much to take.

*

That night they return to the waiting truck with their pockets weighed down with someone else’s coin. Theirs now, and better that way. They’ll make more careful use of it.

In fact, before they even leave the city, they buy food to bring back to the tribe. That’s Qrow’s idea and Raven seems to agree it will make a big impression. The elder laughs and makes no comment, but he seems impressed, in his own way. 

The food rests between their feet, jostled as they drive along the dirt roads that lead back to home. There’s bread and cheese, simple things, but enough to feed all the other kids, at least, and some of the elders too old to still take for themselves.

Qrow says as much, the pride swelling in his voice.

“It would be better to give it to the strongest,” Raven counters, her back ramrod straight against the edge of the truck bed. “If we feed the best of us, they’ll be stronger and come back with more. It would only help us all.”

“You have a point.”

“I always do—”

“I didn’t finish.” Qrow nudges her not too gently with his elbow. “You have a point, but the strongest can still feed themselves. What about those who can’t?”

“What about them?” When his sister looks at him sometimes, it makes Qrow think of cold winter nights. “It seems to me like they’d be better off with the people in that city.” 

She might be right about that too.

The take is both of theirs, to share, and so is the food — to be split any way that they like — and there’s no point in fighting. “Alright, so we split. Some to the elders and some to your strongest members of the tribe.” 

Raven quickly nods, as if she always expected him to answer this way. 

They ride a little longer in silence. The only sound is the rattle of the metal underneath their feet or clattering just at their back. 

It’s Raven who breaks the silence eventually, saying simply and matter-of-fact, “I already know who the best of us are, you know.”

Qrow does know, but he’s never felt the need to say so, even despite how much he talks. Raven says so much less, but when she does it’s almost always ill advised. “Maybe you shouldn’t tell them that.”

She shrugs and doesn’t bother to answer beyond that.

*

When Raven distributes her food, she declares the recipients the most worthy members of the tribe, loud enough for everyone else standing close by to hear.

Qrow lingers back, feeling uncertain. 

Even less so once Raven adds, as though it’s only just an afterthought, “And my brother will be feeding the weakest and least deserving.” She says that just as loud, of course.

After that, no one accepts any of the food he tries to give them. Not a single one. 

Qrow tries for all of an hour before bringing the food over to Raven. 

“Took you long enough,” she says, without bothering to examine the contents of the sack. She’s certain it’s all there, because that was always her plan. “Next time, don’t be so stubborn, brother.”

 _Next time_ , he thinks, _he’ll know better than to trust his sister._

*

But it isn’t true. They trust each other more than anything else.

When Grimm overtake the caravans returning home from a day’s take in the city, Raven is the first to leap from the vehicle and charge at their open hungry mouths. She doesn’t flinch or show any fear at all. 

She’s never been afraid of anything, and it’s always been easier for Qrow to ignore his own fear when he’s at his sister’s side. Together, they’re almost invincible.

Even with the occasional broken bone and lots of bruises, he barely notices. It really almost doesn’t hurt when they’re laughing about it together later on. Family’s funny like that.

Then comes the day their world turns inside out.

*

A village caught up in a Dust explosion that levels more than half its population is already in a real bad way, but add in all the mourning for the dead and you also have a lot of Grimm drawn straight into the heart of town. The people, the few that remained, ran for their lives.

It’s tragic, sure. Even if these were everyday untrustworthy people of Mistral, the whole tribe could agree that it’s awful. 

But it’s also an opportunity. 

They weren’t going to be using the fortunes and food they’d left behind, now were they?

*

They send an entire convoy of their very best to run in and back out again. It’s the responsibility of some to draw the Grimm away — on a pointless hunt or to take them out, it doesn’t matter — while the rest of them loot as many houses as they can. Each and every truck of overeager teenagers spends the entire ride there arguing over who from the teams of five or so should be the one to take on the Grimm head on.

Raven wins for their truck, with hardly a debate. 

It’s only the one boy — new to the tribe, some scruffy runaway with too much bravado and not enough sense — who tries to challenge her once they pull up near the city limits. She’s got her back turned when he leaps down by her side near the back wheel, looming close behind her until she straightens from retrieving a weapon from the satchel and he realizes, for what must be the very first time, that she’s taller than he is. 

The realization isn’t enough to shake some sense into him, though. He laughs and lifts his chin, saying, “You sure you don’t want the best man for the job to—” 

He doesn’t even make it to the end of the sentence before she knocks him into the dirt with one hit, straight at that pointed jaw. 

Qrow moves to her side and stares the guy down. “Yeah,” he says. “We’re sure.”

He’s smart enough not to get back up, at least.

*

The boy’s ego isn’t the only thing bruised, but he doesn’t argue when Raven tells him to let Qrow take the lead in town. “I’ll give you two the time you need,” she tells them, matter-of-fact.

Qrow doesn’t wait to see if the boy looks annoyed or upset. He just walks, expecting him to follow.

He does, however slowly. Too slowly. 

“Come on,” Qrow says, without a backward glance. “We have to hit in and out, before the Grimm come back.”

There’s screams and hollering coming from further down the trail — the first members of the tribe calling out to the Grimm for attention — when another sound cuts through the night. It’s shouting, but from the other direction. 

From inside the village, they can hear the cries of hunters and huntresses. 

Early. 

Well before anyone could have expected them, they’re in the center of town, calling out to each other. They move together, coordinated and clever. If he wasn’t so annoyed by the interruption, Qrow might even be impressed. 

But he is annoyed. Very annoyed.

“Hey, idiot,” he half-snarls, just above a whisper, as he drags the boy back by the hem of his shirt and pulls him behind a bush to watch. “Do you _want_ a hunter to bust open your Aura and feed you to the Grimm?”

The boy blinks, confused by the question. “… no?”

“Didn’t think so. So stay down.”

It’s obvious there’s no point in the original plan. There’s no way into most of the houses with their overabundance of loot if the hunters are barring the way. If anything, they might actually clear this place of Grimm completely and invite the people back to town.

Only after taking their own fair share, of course.

In some ways, that feels like it would be the ideal outcome, except of course it would leave the tribe without. That’s never good, especially with the first frost coming soon. 

“You look troubled, brother.”

Raven has appeared out of nowhere, just at his shoulder, but that’s almost to be expected. Just appearing suddenly is one of her many things. 

That and the smirk she’s wearing now. It’s very on brand.

“You look like you’re not being chased by Grimm.” 

She shrugs. “I heard the shouting and knew it wasn’t one of ours.”

“So the plan’s a bust, right?” 

“Why?” Raven scoffs. “There’s only four of them…”

Qrow frowns and straightens slightly, considering the numbers of their enemy. She’s right. There’s four that he can see. “Four of them, two of us.”

“Three,” the boy huffs, obviously indignant. 

“Two,” Raven repeats, her smirk growing. “Those odds sound fine to me.” 

“So what are you suggesting?” 

“We take what we came for and only deal with them if they try to stop us.” She gestures broadly at the combat ahead of them. “They’re handling the Grimm _for_ us. We should almost be grateful.”

“Somehow, I’m not feeling it.” But off his sister’s smile, Qrow can’t help but start to grin. “And if they try to stop us? You think it’s worth it to get into a fight?”

“You know how much is probably in there?” Raven asks, her voice suddenly hard and sharp. “Probably enough for all your elder tribe members you’re so desperate to feed.” She eyes him up and down. “Isn’t that what you said you wanted?”

It is. 

He can’t believe that Raven’s choosing now to actually listen.

*

The plan isn’t perfect, but it still executes smoothly. They move around the edges of the village, only taking what they can easily carry and moving on fast. There’s no time to linger or second guess their choices. Grab anything, everything, and run, as quietly as you can. Hope that the coordination and shouting coming from the hunters is enough to keep them from hearing your steps. At first, there are no problems.

And suddenly, as quickly as all of it started, there are nothing but problems. 

It starts with more screaming.

One of the Grimm breaks lose from the huntress pursuing it. The boy, the hothead, must have more fear in him than he’s let on, because it rushes right for him, barreling through the locked door of the hut they’ve broken into. The hinges should hold longer — at least enough time for them to escape out the back window — but it shatters on a single impact. 

Simple bad luck.

The boy screams so loud when the Beowolf rakes its claws across his back. It must be terror more than anything, because his aura should be holding, and momentary pain can be overcome.

But now the huntress is hot on the heels of the Grimm, looming in the doorway. Her eyes take in the scene in front of her, focusing on the two of them quickly. She hardly gives the Beowolf itself a second glance as her blade slices clean through it. “This isn’t your house,” she assesses. “And those aren’t your bags of stuff.”

The idiot is standing now, off-balance and still very anxious. Stupid too, since he thinks it’s a good idea to blurt out, “They’re ours now.” 

“Hold on,” Qrow tries to interject. “We can explain everything.”

They can’t, and the huntress doesn’t look like she even considers that possibility. He’s lying, and it’s so obvious, but it doesn’t matter. 

He doesn’t have to say much more.

The screaming turns to shouting and everything happens, all at once. Blades are drawn. The boy starts to run. He screams, and the Grimm pursue. He falls under a mass of their bodies as one of the four hunters tries to intervene. 

There can’t be much of that aura left, and the screams are increasing. More and more of them keep coming, and now both men disappear under the pile.

The huntress blocking the doorway shouts. It sounds like a name, but Qrow is too focused on tracking the course of his sister. 

She’s running to them, across the expanse of the conflict. She is silent apart from the sounds of her feet thudding, but there is a look in her eyes that Qrow has never seen before. 

Maybe it’s almost fear.

“We go,” she calls to Qrow. “Now.”

He doesn’t have time to consider what to do next. He just does it.

While the huntress is looking away — occupied with concern for her teammate — it’s easy to catch her off guard and land a solid blow to the back of her head. As she starts to turn, blade drawn, Raven uses the distraction to land her own quick and rapid punches. 

“What—” She coughs, a startled exhalation of air in response to another heavy impact. “ _No._ ”

She moves to pull away, to retreat toward her team, but Qrow steps in to block her path. “I’m sorry,” he says, and he almost means it. “But you’re not family.” He swings the satchel filled with all their loot directly at her head, hefting with all his might, and feels the muscles in his shoulder straining with the effort. 

It hurts her more than him. 

There’s a loud cracking sound but no blood or bruising — not yet — as her head clatters against the doorframe. 

This is so much worse than fighting with Grimm. When the woman turns her gaze on him, she is wide-eyed (terrified) and he takes a quick step back, then another. But her blade is there to close the distance. “ _No_ ,” she breathes out heavily, frantically, and lunges.

The blade should slip through the flimsy fabric of his shirt, up through his guts, and lodge somewhere close to his ribs. In an instant, he’s sure that’s how this is going to happen, just the way he’s always felt as though he knows in the instant just before things fall apart. 

The branch breaks, the door gives way, his flesh yields to the blade. 

But it doesn’t happen that way. 

Suddenly, she’s gone, and there’s just an open red angry wound in the air in front of him. It’s one of his sister’s portals, to where he can’t be sure. Qrow blinks, still dazed in his confusion. 

But that doesn’t slow Raven at all. “Idiot!” she screams, as though it’s his name. “Run! Now.”

He doesn’t need to be told twice.

*

There are tire tracks where the other trucks left — all in a hurry — and there’s only one driver left, looking anxious and angry. “Where’s the new kid?”

“Dead,” Raven says, without hesitation. “Or close enough.”

The man looks surprised, but largely unconcerned.

“He’s probably fine, but not coming back,” Qrow adds, as clarification. 

“You really think that’s true?”

They climb into the back together, only one satchel of loot left between the two of them. “Why, you don’t?”

“I don’t care either way.” 

The thing is, Qrow really believes that she means it. He’s learning now.

*

As they draw closer to the compound, it starts to sound like the whole rest of the tribe is awake and talking (loudly) about something. They’re gathered close to one of the cages — must be one of the other assignments sent out at dawn — but as the truck draws closer Qrow can hear a familiar voice, calling out above the noise, “But is he alright? Can’t anyone tell me?”

It’s the huntress. The one with the blade that had nearly gone straight through him. He blinks and his eyes instantly find Raven. “You sent her _here_?”

“I didn’t have many options,” she answers quickly, easily. “And she’ll be worth a decent profit.”

“You’re sure?”

“She’s a huntress. They’re always worth something to someone.”

The way she’s still carrying on like that, her voice frantic and getting louder, Qrow can’t help but think that the other one — the hunter that disappeared alongside their boy in the pile of Grimm — must have meant a whole lot to her, at least. He frowns, despite himself. “What’s the catch?”

“No trust at all, brother?”

“Trusting and knowing someone don’t always work together.”

She laughs at that as the truck slows to a stop, a pleased and pleasant sound, but doesn’t bother to even glance back as she jumps down.

*

It isn’t until the morning that Qrow learns that when the huntress came spilling out through a hole in the world, her blade buried itself deep into the chest of one of the tribal elders, too old and weak to be out on an assignment.

The kind of elder Raven had said they would be feeding. 

“At least it was quick,” says a sharp-faced girl who was there when he died. “He distracted her long enough for us to pin her down.” She licks her teeth more than her lips. “She’s going to be worth a small fortune now.”

That doesn’t feel like it’s the point, or it shouldn’t be, but Qrow can’t be sure. A lot is happening, and it doesn’t slow down.

“Your sister showed so much wisdom and character,” one of the elders — one of the ones who wasn’t stabbed and left to bleed out in the dirt — says to him with a slow smile. “You weren’t so bad yourself.” 

“She saved me,” Qrow hears himself saying, because it’s true. That’s what happened. 

Raven saved his life and the ransom she earns is enough to pay to feed most of them half the winter. But it’s worth a little more than that too.

That’s the day the elders decide to send the two of them away to school.

*

“You can’t be serious,” Raven says for easily the fifth time, as though repetition is likely to get her out of this through stubborn determination. “What have we done to deserve this punishment?”

The elders all exchange looks. They seem uncertain; a lot of people seem that way when it comes to Raven. “It is… intended as a reward.”

Qrow tries not to show a smile.

“It isn’t one.”

“Many of the other children would leap at a chance to—”

“So ask them.” She shrugs. “I don’t need these other people of Mistral or their stupid lessons. My brother and I are already better than their huntresses, all on our own.” 

Qrow wouldn’t necessarily agree with that — he saw how close things came the last time, could see it perfectly just moments before it nearly happened — but he knows better than to argue with his sister when she’s set herself on a path. 

“You’re good, but you can be made better.” 

“And leave our family? For what?”

The elder tribesman leans in closer, his expression as hard and unyielding as any blade. “For the good of our family.”

Just like that, Raven falls silent. Even Qrow doesn’t expect it. 

She agrees, on behalf of the both of them, within the hour. By the end of the week, their bags are packed. 

It’s only six days later that they leave their tribe behind.

*

During breakfast preparations, Qrow does his best to offer to cut, prepare, or clean, but everyone pushes him to the side. “You won’t be here tomorrow, there’s no point in relying on you now.”

“But—”

“Just eat fast, then move out of our way.” 

None of them bother to even look at him for very long. He and his sister eat in the corner, alone, and practically silent. The only sound is their spoons clanging against the side of their bowls. 

“Don’t sulk,” Raven says, eventually breaking the silence directly. 

Qrow frowns, very much still sulking. “I don’t do that.”

“You’re doing it right now. You do it all the time.” She’s almost smiling, though, shaking her head. “You’re the one who wanted this. If you had agreed with me, you would have said so before. But you were silent. You _wanted_ to leave.” She finishes her meal in another three large bites and sets the bowl aside. “You always have.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“That’s usually the case too.”

Qrow scowls and stands. “Doesn’t it bother you?”

“The fact that you’re slower than me bothers me all the time, but—”

“You _know_ what I mean.” There’s an anger creeping into his voice that he can’t bother to disguise. It’s there, and it’s growing. Raven never wants to talk — not about anything that’s real — but he can’t hold this feeling inside anymore. “In a few weeks time, if we decide to come back, they might not even be at this spot. We might never find them. Our family doesn’t want us anymore.”

Raven doesn’t even bother to look back at him — much too focused on arranging supplies carefully in her satchel. “You’re wrong about a lot of things, brother, but that doesn’t surprise me.” Finally, she raises her gaze to him, blinking slowly. “Our family is making us _better_. But most things change when you aren’t looking. You’ve just never bothered to care before.”

He frowns, surprised by her directness. “I don’t know what that means.”

“I know.” 

She’s back to not looking as she walks out the door.

*

The next year at combat school passes quicker than any year in his life. There are so many new things to learn — techniques and skills, of course, but also the names of other people, so many of them that it’s almost overwhelming — but somehow Raven never seems to mind. She is a calming center, steady in her lack of interest in all the others.

She makes indifference seem easy and desirable, even as her focus in their lessons pushes Qrow further and further every time. 

He needs to be her equal, if not better. Sometimes he thinks he might one day learn to be better. He thinks it, but the next day at training she sends him right back to the dirt.

“You telegraph too much of what you’re thinking,” she says, offering her hand. “It’s all over your face, all the time.”

“Maybe it’s just my lack of luck.” 

Raven shakes her head, insistent when she says, “No, it’s a lack of control.” She pulls him to his feet. “You need to stop thinking about what could go wrong. Focus on what you’ll do right.” She nudges him and he takes a step back. “Don’t tell me everything you’re doing before it happens.”

He wants to prove her wrong so much that he takes a swing at her head — which she catches.

“You see?”

He does. Even if he resents it, he understands exactly what she means. 

And somehow, slowly, it starts to make him better.

*

They spend most of their days becoming warriors. More focused, more deadly, but more in control too. He still races her to the top of treetops or up the side of a building, but when the missteps come or he starts to fall, he trusts that Raven will suddenly be there to catch him.

And she is. Always has been.

The first summer they return home to learn their tribe isn’t where they left them, it’s Raven who puts her arm around Qrow when he tries not to feel anything. 

But instead he feels everything, most of it anger. 

“It doesn’t make you mad?” 

Raven gives him a squeeze, hard and unrelenting. “I don’t have time to be mad.” She releases him. “The sun will set soon and we have to start tracking them.”

Qrow scoffs, but she doesn’t laugh. He blinks, trying to recenter himself. “You’re not serious.” 

She blinks right back, looking just as unsure. “Where else would we go?”

He doesn’t have an answer to that.

*

They’ll find them, eventually. They have to go on foot, because Raven’s portals don’t work with the rest of their family, not anymore.

She refuses to tell him why, even though he thinks she owes him that much. 

Instead, they walk in frustrated silence, shadows stretching out ahead of them as the sun sets at their backs. 

Raven studies the trees and listens to the sound of the animals all around them. The birds do sound different, but he’s not really sure why. Couldn’t it just be the weather?

Qrow reaches for a low branch, ready to haul himself up for a better look, but she puts a finger to her lips to call for silence. He obliges, hesitating with one hand still suspended in air and his eyes growing wide. 

She points ahead, further down the trail.

There’s a light, probably a fire. 

Could be one of theirs, or someone else. They have to be sure before approaching. 

With a quick (stern) shake of his head, Qrow begins to climb. She scowls at him, but follows right after. Neither of them break a single branch on their way to the top.

From up there, the signals of their family’s fires are obvious. That’s a scouting party, in search of easy prey out too late at night. He grins and nudges her. “See? And now we know.”

She turns her steady gaze in his direction, unblinking. “You sure they’ll know us on sight?”

“Maybe not.” He shrugs and starts climbing back down. “But either way, there’s no one to ransom us off to, and I wouldn’t mind them driving us the rest of the way home.”

Raven doesn’t have a smart remark in return for that.

*

Home.

The concept begins to feel fuzzy. 

There are their beds they sleep in every night and the routines they fall right back into in the morning. They take turns preparing the meals or cleaning up after. Sometimes he gathers wood for the fire. Often, they’re sent out to hunt for easy prey — people or animal, it doesn’t matter — and the sameness of it is comforting, in its own way. 

This is how their lives used to be. Simple routines.

But the people are different now. They only know some of the faces. Some of the elders died in the winter passed, and some of the new hot heads don’t listen to anything he has to say. “Old man” one of them calls him.

He’s fifteen and frustrated. He is hungry all the time for the regular meals they serve at combat school and bored with no one but Raven to train with. She makes him better, sure, but he wants more. Isn’t wanting more — and taking it — what they’ve always been taught?

He is homesick while at home.

*

He is stronger than he ever remembers being. The next time they move camp, he carries twice what he had before, easily. The kids who didn’t listen before can only whistle. They’re impressed.

They don’t call him old man after that.

Not that they speak to him much at all. He’s taken up Raven’s habit of not making as many new friends — not when they might not even be there come next summer. It’s easier not to care when people disappear suddenly if you never allowed yourself to remember they were there at all. No wonder Raven’s always so calm and collected. 

She can hide her feelings from her face because she limits how many there are. 

Better than Qrow who used to cry over dead frogs and once knew the name of every single old man or woman who lived in their village. There was a time he could have drawn them from memory, he feels so sure, but now he tries to remember even their faces and there’s nothing there but an empty ache. The place where people had been has been overwritten with hours and months of training. 

In the space that once held names, he has strategies. Where once were faces, there’s combat and choreography.

On the last week of lessons, he said that he wanted to learn the scythe. 

“You’ll have to earn it,” they had said. 

Being good enough to _earn it_ is all he’s dreamed of since. He wakes up in his cot, near his sister, and the only family he’s ever known, and he can’t wait for it to be winter again.

*

When winter comes, their goodbyes are quick. They leave before the sun is fully up in the sky. No one comes to see them off.

They carry only what they need, leaving everything behind. 

He cares less than he did the first time.

*

The first day of classes, one of their instructors takes Qrow aside. “I have a gift for you,” they say, holding out a thick black case.

As obvious as it probably should be, he’s still surprised to find the scythe inside. 

Just like Raven has always warned him, his reaction is too obvious on his face. It must be, because of how his instructor looks away quickly. 

Qrow doesn’t understand what they have to gain with this. What the point is in giving him something without expectation of a return. He even says so — more openly than he probably should — asking, “What’s the catch?”

“No catch,” they say. “Just learn to use it well.” They put a hand on his shoulder and he feels heat radiating out from the touch. “Earn it.”

*

Over the next several months, he does his best to earn it. His body changes and so does his mind. The muscles adjust to the weight of carrying and swinging his new weapon. Some swell and others stretch and alter to the new shapes he’s never made before. He is sore and bruised most mornings, but happier than he ever remembers being. He thinks faster than he used to, calculating movements.

He’s so occupied with thinking that it stops showing up on his face. 

Sometimes he even beats Raven at sparring. 

When summer comes, he asks to stay. “We’re better, the both of us. You feel it too.” He shrugs. “Think how much better we’ll both be in three months training here.”

“There is nowhere for us to stay here,” Raven says, always so simple and matter-of-fact. “Get some rest. We’re leaving early enough tomorrow to find them before it’s dark this time.”

That night, he can barely sleep at all, already thinking about the start of new lessons in the winter and all the things he’s going to learn to do when fighting. 

They find the camp early enough for Qrow to see how few people he knows gathering wood for the fire. Strangers, most of them.

The only one he really knows anymore is Raven, who he spends most of his hours with. She doesn’t seem to resent his presence the way she sometimes did in the past. 

Maybe he’s the only one that she knows too.

*

So it goes. The days feel long when the sun stays up, but there’s time at least to get better, faster, and stronger.

When one of the hotheads tries to steal his scythe from under his cot, Qrow finds the kid and takes it back. He considers hitting him — over and over — until his aura cracks, but relents when Raven offers to slit his throat instead. Sometimes her effect is still sobering. 

“Not worth it,” he says instead, backing away. 

Raven sneers and hits the boy upside the head, only once. 

Probably, she wouldn’t kill him if Qrow had agreed.

Probably.

*

Winter comes again and summer follows too fast. The patterns start again and he finds it easier, with time. Anything can be a rhythm if you’re patient.

He never used to be that, really patient, but time has a way of changing all kinds of things. 

One year he says that he wants to stay and Raven answers, “There might be something, actually.” 

The elders he barely recognizes want them to attend an academy to become full and official hunter and huntress. When they talked with his sister about this — and not him — he’s not sure, but she says it like it’s a great idea.

“For how long?” 

“Years,” she answers, instantly. “It’s just like you always wanted, isn’t it?”

He’s not sure that’s true, so he doesn’t answer, which Raven obviously takes as a yes. She scowls at him, but doesn’t say more, so it’s up to Qrow to keep pushing. “Where’s Beacon? I’ve never heard of it.” 

“Do you not listen to anything they say that isn’t about hitting things?” Raven scoffs. “It’s in the Kingdom of Vale.” 

Qrow has listened enough to know that Vale is farther than anyone in their tribe has ever dreamed of traveling. “… when do we leave?”

“Tomorrow.”

He feels his heart leap up into his throat, but tries to hide it. “Were you going to never tell me?”

“I knew you’d ask.” 

She’s probably telling the truth; year after year, Qrow has asked. Raven only waited for the right time — the last moment — to say yes.

*

At dawn, he tells their instructor goodbye.

If he didn’t know better, Qrow might actually think there’s real sadness on their face, but a warrior as accomplished as they are would never show so much. 

He must be imagining it.

They leave directly from combat school, without any time to find their tribe to say goodbyes. It only occurs to Qrow once they’re boarding their air ship that he doesn’t know when he’ll see any of them again. 

“Raven,” he asks, as they find their seats and carefully ignore the other passengers. “Do you think there are lots of trees to climb in Vale?”

But she hardly seems to be listening, too busy studying the crowd for anything or anyone suspicious.

“Raven—”

He starts to ask again, but she cuts him off, saying, “We’re going to be a little too busy for tree climbing, I think.”

And maybe she’s right. She usually is.

As Mistral disappears below them, so small and far away, the only thing that’s really real is his sister at his side. 

One and one.


	2. two and two

*

Beacon Academy is bigger than any building Qrow has ever seen outside of the paintings hung on the walls in small houses and inns that they’ve ransacked. Even with those, he wasn’t sure when they were real or how many were imagined by the artist. 

This, at least, is beyond his own imagination. 

The towers and spires rise so high that he sways craning his neck to look. Raven puts a hand on the small of his back, first to brace him and then to give a small nudge. He almost stumbles but smiles instead, casting a grin back over his shoulder. “Hey, easy now.”

“You too.” 

She walks on ahead without another look back — her usual habit — but he speeds up his pace to keep level with her, saying, “It’s higher than our trees.”

“That’s obvious.” Raven glances over at him, now that they’re side-by-side. “You don’t really think I needed you to point that out to me.”

He pushes on, without missing a moment. “But harder to run up, don’t you think?”

She grins suddenly, as though startled into it, but then quickly resets her expression closer to something neutral. “Maybe someday.”

“We’ve got time.”

*

But time passes strangely at Beacon. Those first few days with so many loud new faces move slower than a normal day. Chaos is constant and everyone wants his attention for much longer than he wants to give it. Exhausting doesn’t begin to cover it.

Moments alone with his sister are comforting in how familiar they are. She’s still just Raven, quiet and distant from all of it. 

“I have a plan,” she says suddenly, without any kind of preamble, and that’s normal too. She always has more plans at the ready.

When it comes time to select teams, they will find each other first. She assumes there will be some kind of challenge or test — a display of strength, skill, or bravery — and they will both seek each other out. 

“I’ll come to you,” she says, a smirk curling at the corner of her mouth. 

They both know what that means, but none of the other students do. The secrecy of it is an advantage, and they’re going to try to keep it (for now).

*

In the end, their secret lasts less than 24 hours.

Qrow doesn’t mean for it to happen this way. They have a plan, after all, and from the moment that they’re told they’re going to begin by plummeting through the sky, he’s thinking about his sister saving him. They’re both used to it, after all. It’s a pattern — one of the many their lives are ruled by — and it’s all part of the plan. 

But that’s not what happens. 

There’s no way for Qrow to know why he ends up shot through the air long after his sister has gone — after he loses sight of her amongst the trees and no amount of spiraling as he descends is enough to help him reorient himself — but he has a few guesses that it might be down to rotten luck, or maybe deliberate sabotage by the headmaster in charge. 

Something about the way he’d smirked when he noted they were twins should have tipped them off. 

But there’s no time to worry about that now as he’s falling with terrifying speed.

This whole process seems wildly unsafe, and exactly the kind of thing he’d expect people not from the tribe to do with their children. No need to value your resources when you haven’t got an entire community to answer to.

But, no — focus. He needs to focus before he collides with the ground.

Which is approaching _very_ fast, just beyond the tangle of trees that will not only break his fall but probably several bones and possibly his nose in the process. It’s the thought of that — damage to the beautiful face — that really provokes Qrow to action.

The next part is almost instinctive. Self-preservation.

Face-preservation. 

His scythe extends, bends, and fully forms in one fluid movement as he extends his arm, ready for impact, and catches the blade in the nearest tree trunk as he plunges past. Conscious of the angle, he takes care not to lodge too deeply. He only wants to slow his descent, not stop it so abruptly that he damages his shoulder. 

Even so, the painfully slow drop is still genuinely just that. It’s painful. The leaves and branches scratch at his face, but he’s used to that much. The friction strains his muscles, but he holds fast.

Years of climbing trees in their home forest has prepared Qrow for this very moment. 

He lands lightly on his feet, smiling, before stumbling just the once and quickly falling to his knees in the dirt. Not exactly graceful, but at least no one saw. 

“Hey!” a voice calls from directly above, definitely close enough to have seen. “Can you help me?”

Without a moment to think about the plan or the inevitable anger of his sister, Qrow looks up and locks his gaze on startling blue eyes. 

“… uhhghh,” he says, although it’s not really a word. It’s barely a coherent sound.

But the blue-eyed man doesn’t seem put off, even if that might be from a lack of choices. “I’m hoping that you can help, seeing as we’re partners now and all.”

Oh, Qrow realizes in an instant — one in which all the anxious fear of his sister’s possible (and likely) retribution crashes in all around him — that this was not the plan.

“Oh,” he breathes, much closer to a word, but also slightly like a yelp. 

Because the first person Qrow locks eyes with, in the end, is not his sister. In a lot of ways, it’s the exact opposite. This is a man, smiling and a little clumsy, with his blond hair dangling in his face as he hangs upside down from a tree. 

“Hey,” he waves. “Do you think you could help me with this?” The man demonstrates his problem — as though it’s not very obvious — by wiggling his foot amongst the branches. “I’m kind of stuck!” 

“Only kind of?”

He shrugs and the leaves rattle. “I’m very stuck, but I didn’t want to discourage you from helping.”

Qrow is halfway up the tree when his sister appears at his side, much louder than she needs to be at this distance, asking, “What is _he_ doing here?”

He almost loses his grip on the branch holding him up. 

“Feeling increasingly dizzy as all the blood rushes to my head, actually.” At this point, they’re almost eye-level with the still bizarrely cheerful blond, who smiles and holds out his hand toward Raven first since she looks more at ease while climbing. “Pleasure to meet you. My name’s Tai.” 

“… okay, I’m not going to learn that.” Raven turns her head toward Qrow again. “You didn’t follow the plan.” 

Even if it doesn’t take Raven as much effort to keep her balance, Qrow requires plenty of focus and he’s applying it as best he can. “Not deliberately!” He pulls himself ever higher, slow and steady. “I heard screaming.”

“Why would you run toward the sound of screaming?” Raven visibly recoils, only swaying slightly on the branch; she recovers quickly. “Have you learned absolutely nothing in our training?”

“Not how to shut you up, definitely.” 

The blond, apparently named Tai, clears his throat lightly. “I just want to remind you that I can hear everything you’re saying. It feels a little…”

“Unnecessary?”

“I was going to go with personal, but that too.” He shuts up abruptly at the look he gets from Raven. 

By now Qrow has reached the branch Tai’s leg became lodged in and begins to poke and prod at the complex network of leaves and wood, taking great care not to—

Suddenly, quickly, the single smaller branch still keeping Tai lodged in place snaps.

He screams as he starts to fall.

Raven sighs and rolls her eyes very dramatically before opening a tear in the world just a few feet below the rapidly plummeting boy that deposits him right back at Qrow’s side, still screaming.

It actually takes Tai a few seconds to realize what’s happening, during which the very loud noises of terror do eventually trail off. He blinks and studies the dissipating hole in the world crackling in bright vivid red just behind them. 

Qrow looks too. Through the other side, he can see the two of them dangling on the branch, suspended just above the entrance. Looking down, he can see his own right ear. 

Disorienting, at best. 

By turning his head, Qrow has a near perfect view of his sister scowling two branches below them. He smirks right in her direction. “This wasn’t the plan either, sis.”

*

Their task is to go find some trinket — Qrow was only half-focused on the actual assignment once it became clear he would be plummeting through the air and the rest of his attention was directed toward managing his flight path — but just now they’re not making any progress.

That’s because Qrow and Raven are still up in the tree, with Tai urged to wait for them down below. 

And by urged, it really means that Raven pushed him from one of the lower branches. 

Luckily he didn’t land on his head at any point on the way down. Too nice a face to ruin it, really. 

“We could kill him,” Raven says, just a whisper close to Qrow’s ear. 

“You don’t mean that.”

“I don’t?” She scoffs. “What’s another useless hunter out of our way now instead of later?” When Qrow meets her gaze, he’s no longer completely sure that his sister doesn’t mean it. “We could make it look like just any other accident. You’re full of those.”

“I’m not going to murder some kid because you don’t want to meet new people.”

Raven’s eyes grow wide and then instantly narrow again. She looks furious in an especially meaningless way, sputtering, “That is _not_ — I’m not—” She huffs and tries again. “I don’t care about other people!” 

“So then you won’t have any problem talking with one.” Qrow watches her expectantly, but the flustered redness never really leaves his sister’s face. “… look at it this way,” he tries again. “This is good practice for when we have to handle hunters and huntresses in the future. Sometimes, we might deal with things just by talking.” Off Raven’s still very skeptical look, he even adds, “And you have to be able to talk to strangers to arrange for them to pay the bounties.”

That finally gets her. She nods, frowning in what he can only assume is vague annoyance over him making such a fine point. “Fine! You keep that one as your partner and I’ll go find some other useless child.” She stands quickly, scowling in the general direction of the earth — and Tai down there along with it — before calling out, “Careful down there. I don’t want to snap your fragile neck when I land.”

But she doesn’t really wait long enough to allow him time to respond before she drops with a precise and confident leap.

“Figures.” Qrow sighs and begins his own slow descent, one branch at a time.

*

The other useless child that Raven finds is the least useless of them all, but they don’t know that at first. At first, Summer only seems to be everything that Raven isn’t.

Summer is kind in ways that Raven finds infuriating. She laughs easily and smiles constantly. On that first walk deeper into the woods as a group of four, in search of their task, Summer tells jokes and asks questions of them all. She really seems to want to know.

Tai talks eagerly about his home and family and Qrow stumbles through some vague lies. 

Raven answers every question, but only in simple declarations. 

“Do you have brothers and sisters?”

“Yes,” Raven says. 

Summer waits, as if she expects there to be elaboration, but finally asks, “How many?”

“Many.”

Qrow and Tai quickly exchange a look, but neither of them interjects. 

“Do you not want to tell me about your family?”

“It’s obvious that I don’t.” Raven walks ahead of the group, never glancing their direction to make sure that anyone’s following. “I didn’t realize that they allowed the simple-minded into Beacon as well. You should be very proud of all you’ve achieved.”

“Raven.”

This time she does look back, the annoyance clear on her face. “Brother.”

There’s nothing else to say to her, not when she’s in a mood like this. He doesn’t try to stop them again, and Summer at least seems to take the hint. 

She asks fewer questions of Raven as they walk, and eventually not many of Qrow either.

By the time they finish their task and are declared a team, they all know a great deal about Tai’s entire family, down to their detailed preferences for Sunday dinner.

*

Roast pork, by the way.

Qrow can admit that his new partner seems to be a man of taste.

*

It’s no surprise really that Summer is made their leader. She is the most in tune with each of them, even if everything about her and Raven seems to run counter to one another’s nature. Still, Summer manages it fine; it’s only a few days, and already she’s learning.

Summer, who is always smiling, stifles the expression just the smallest bit when she looks at Qrow’s sister. It makes him think of the careful approach toward a wild animal in the woods. 

Startle her and she might flee. 

But if Raven notices the difference, she doesn’t show it on her face. She scowls whenever she sees Summer or Tai, but at least she lingers for longer. 

Progress, already.

But it’s not just her understanding of human nature that makes Summer ideal for leadership. She suggests that they create a “harmonious” living space, each with their own area.

“A place of our own,” she says, smiling her calm and confident smile that instantly makes Raven sneer. 

A place to call his own isn’t something Qrow has experience with. The closest he’s come before has been his scythe, or maybe when he used the same cot year after year as he grew, before they left and it was given away to someone else. Everything else has always been theirs, not his. Everything has always belonged to the tribe. 

He doesn’t even know how to begin to create or define something of his own, and neither does Raven, he realizes. She leaves the bed and all the space around it empty, tucking in her sheets at sharp corners before storming out of the room, all on her own. 

Anything else and these strangers might actually start to know her. 

If there is anything else to know.

Qrow thinks he’s not sure what there even is to keep a secret. What him would he be hiding?

He sits on the rumpled sheets of his bed and makes a big show out of taking care of his scythe — polishing and adjusting the small and precise mechanisms — while out of the corner of his eye he watches the way that Summer and Tai make use of this opportunity. He wants to know the thems that they find for themselves, in all the little ways they share it.

Tai hangs up magazine clippings of handsome men and beautiful women that he’s brought with him in a battered shoebox. The edges are imprecise and jagged, and some of the images have started to fade off-white. He uses tape instead of easy to remove putty and arranges it all in a completely indecipherable and baffling pattern. 

For a small handful, he stands on his bed to reach the very heights of his wall and even plasters one rugged looking guy directly across the ceiling. 

Qrow finds his eyes lingering there a little too long — too long because Tai sees him and grins — before he refocuses back on his own blade. At this rate, the edge is going to be almost too sharp.

 _Not possible_ , Raven would say.

On the other side of the room, Summer Rose, true to her name almost to a fault, has somehow produced an entire truck worth of flowers, of all different kinds. She hangs some on the wall in elaborately erected vases and uses small end tables and bookshelves for other arrangements. In between the patches of color and green, she has books about almost every topic Qrow can think of — anatomy, history, weapon construction, the fundamentals of Dust — and again he’s caught staring, but Summer doesn’t leave it at that. 

She says something, smiling brightly. “You can borrow one any time, just please return it in good condition.”

“Borrow,” Qrow repeats, hoping to better understand the concept. He’s heard of other people — the weak and greedy ones — would take things from others that they hadn’t earned for their own private use instead of sharing with the collective. It had seemed grossly selfish, but the way Summer says it doesn’t sound that way at all. “And then I return it to you?”

“That’s how borrowing generally works, you know.” Tai laughs and stops at the edge of Qrow’s bed, just a few inches away from their toes touching. “Do you want help making your bed?”

If there’s one thing Qrow knows how to do, it’s simple chores that maintain order. He could produce perfect sheet corners in his sleep, with barely any thought at all. 

So he’s really not sure why he finds himself saying, “I’d appreciate that. Thanks.”

Except for the way that Tai’s smile makes him feel when he allows him to help. The way Tai’s laugh comes out like a burst of joy that swells inside of Qrow’s chest too and then whistles back out again along with the way the other boy licks his lips and nods. 

He grabs Qrow by the elbow, gently, and lifts. “First step, you have to be off the bed we’re making.”

“… right.” Qrow’s gaze lingers too long at the place that Tai was just touching. His scythe is nearly forgotten in his hands, except for the way his knuckles have gone white while clutching it. “We’re making it.”

When Tai laughs again, Qrow finds that he wants to smile too.

He suddenly wants a lot of things, and just the thought of it — the wanting, to have something for his own — makes him flush with a feeling that’s somehow close to shame. He breathes out and looks away, and only then does he notice that Summer’s somehow left the room too. 

It’s just the two of them.

“Don’t worry,” Tai is saying, his elbow brushing against Qrow’s side as he moves in closer and takes one corner of the sheets in his hand. “This is pretty easy. I got the hang of it on almost the first try.”

Qrow lets out a huff of air and considers the way his breath feels inside his own chest. He’s aware of himself in a way he’s never been before. He can’t stop thinking about his own stupid body, the way the bones fit inside it, and how he has no idea how people normally stand. Is he standing right at all? Should he be closer to Tai? Further away?

It’s after this moment of panicked silence filled only with his own thoughts that Qrow realizes that Tai is looking at him, expectantly. 

It must be his turn to talk. To say something smart.

“Practice makes perfect,” he says, not very smart or clever at all.

But even so, Tai laughs. 

They both laugh together, their shoulders bumping into each other. So close that Qrow can feel the way that Tai’s body shifts when he breathes in too.

He’s thinking about that, the way both their bodies work, when Raven returns to the room and the feeling quickly changes. 

“What are you doing?” she asks, accusing and openly hostile.

Tai blinks and carefully shifts further away as he reaches for the top sheet. “Making the bed.”

Qrow knows without looking that his sister must be staring at him, expectant and annoyed. She knows just how easy making his bed would be for him.

She knows. 

But he doesn’t look back and he doesn’t slow down, tugging at the sheets and pressing out the wrinkles with a long move of his palm across the still surface. He stands again — straight and slightly stiff, a careful distance away from Tai and his shoulders — before he declares, for the benefit of no one, “There, done.”

His side of the room stays just like that for some long time, just as carefully blank as his sister’s. 

For now, at least, she seems satisfied.

*

The next suggestion Summer makes related to their rooms goes over better with the both of them.

“A chore system,” she declares, hanging up a carefully (and colorfully) created chart with tiny pins that won’t damage the paint underneath. “This way we can all do our part to keep the room looking nice.” 

She smiles at the other three and waits for a response. 

“Good,” is all Raven says, sharp and to the point as always. 

Tai looks less convinced, studying each word carefully with his arms crossed and a scowl looking out of place on his face. “Are all of these necessary?” He points. “You sure the rest of us should have to water _your_ flowers?”

“They’re not mine,” Summer says, without a moment’s hesitation. “They’re for all of us.”

That gets Raven’s attention, and she’s too slow to hide the look of reevaluation and appraisal. Maybe the other two don’t notice, but Qrow sees. 

She’s studying their team leader now, as if she’s seeing her again for the first time. It makes Qrow think of the way they used to learn to analyze a Grimm, looking for its weaknesses. 

Or maybe, he thinks, seeing the way Raven’s sharp smile slowly softens, it’s something else. Something new. 

“I think it’s good,” Raven says eventually, each word coming slowly, almost reluctantly. “That we should do things for all of us.” Her arms are crossed too now, but there’s a slackness in her posture. Not relaxed, never that, but she is too close to standing at ease to be able to run away just now.

That’s very new.

Qrow is so distracted by this change in his sister that he doesn’t notice Tai watching him, at least not at first.

Once he does, he has to resist the impulse to swallow quickly.

It’s not his fault that his throat feels suddenly dry.

“You like this too?” Tai gestures to the chore list, as if he needs to clarify, and maybe he does. Because Qrow does like it, all of it — the chore chart, the way his sister softens when she’s close to Summer, the way that his own chest feels when Tai looks at him for long. 

But all he says is, “Yeah,” shrugging like it’s all very simple, even if it’s not. Nothing has felt simple since they got to Beacon.

But this — the familiar and familial — is somehow close. 

“Alright then.” Tai throws his hands in the air in exaggerated surrender. “I can’t fight all of you.” He draws back, his posture relaxing as he moves, and winks just once. “I mean, I could, but I don’t want to damage any of your pretty faces.”

Maybe he doesn’t notice the way that Qrow’s face heats up at that, but probably he does. 

The way his gaze lingers a little long — even longer than usual — he probably notices. And Qrow thinks, just for now, he probably likes it that way.

*

Surprisingly, in their own way, the people are easy.

For the first time, other parts of the routine are more difficult. Living with a new kind of family who don’t treat dorms and duties the way either of them is used to is its own adjustment, of course, but the classes are so much worse.

Qrow thought he would be prepared. He spent so much time in combat school, after all, studying his weapon and how to make best use of it. He spent years training through observation, learning about different kinds of Grimm and how to react. His sister analyzed her semblance and taught herself the most efficient ways to utilize it — when and how.

They had learned how to learn, the way the rest of Mistral always had. 

But here at Beacon, it’s all very different. Maybe the difference is in Vale as a whole, or perhaps it’s specific to wanting to be a hunter. Qrow can’t be sure, but now he’s expected not just to care about his weapon and his most direct enemies, but so many details about the world around them too. 

They’re asked to know and care about the history he had ignored for all of his life. They tell him about the dates of battles long since ended and the deaths of people he will never meet. Qrow is expected to care about the reasons strangers had for fighting each other, as if people have ever needed much of a reason to hate, fear, or kill.

The first time that he is called on in class, he hasn’t done the reading. Even the risk of possible embarrassment in front of the other students isn’t enough of a motivator for that.

“Mr. Branwen,” the man in the front of the room begins, and Qrow looks up abruptly. “What were the reasons for—”

He doesn’t even hear the rest of the question, not really. It’s some battle on some date. People died, and the others probably stayed angry, even after they had won.

Qrow waits until it’s obvious that the question is finished being asked, and he shrugs. “They were hungry.” In his experience, that’s usually the right answer.

“I suppose that is one way of looking at it,” the professor says before moving on.

Tai looks impressed and Qrow tries not to let himself notice. (But he does.) Summer puts a hand on his shoulder, very briefly, but under the table he feels Raven nudge her leg into his.

He can’t tell if it’s a rebuke or reassurance; sometimes it’s one and the same with her. 

Classes don’t get any easier after one right answer, but Qrow doesn’t take it as motivation to start reading more either. If Summer is disappointed the next time one of the twins get a question wrong in class, she doesn’t show it.

But she does offer to help Raven with her studies. 

“I didn’t know that you could read,” Raven says, before walking away abruptly. 

Tai shakes his head. There’s often an added element of physicality whenever he speaks. “Even she can’t have missed the massive collection of books on your walls.” 

“I don’t think she means it literally, Tai.”

“Impossible to say with her.” He laughs and nudges Qrow once, warm breath close to his neck. “Or is it? Do you know what she’s getting at?”

“Almost never.”

*

That’s not exactly true, but there’s no point in telling either of them that.

Raven is her own mystery. She can’t be put into words, because they’re too restrictive and logical. Language fits in with other people’s ideas about the world. 

It doesn’t align with Raven. 

She has to be felt — sharp at the edges and often cold to the touch — to be understood. But understand, he mostly does. 

So when he finds her in the dorm room, alone and ignoring him completely once he’s through the door, Qrow doesn’t have to say a word before he retrieves a book from Summer’s top shelf and places it on the end of Raven’s bed. 

The topic is the Great War, which was under discussion in class today. 

She frowns, looking up at him. “What’s this?”

“It’s a book,” Qrow says, without even trying to meet her gaze. He knows she prefers it this way too. “I know that you can read, at least.” 

“And you think I care to?”

“I think you dislike being left out.” 

Raven sneers, and he thinks maybe he’s gone too far. Put too much into words. “You’re thinking of yourself.” 

“No.” Qrow laughs softly and shakes his head. “You want to _know_ everything.” To be more in control, he thinks, but knows better than to say it. 

“And you just want to be everything. Like a child playing pretend.”

The words are probably meant to sting only a little, but Qrow feels it like a blade right through his chest. “We never did that, did we?”

Raven looks up from studying the dust jacket of the book. “What?”

“Had time to play pretend.”

“Don’t be dramatic.” Raven scoffs and tosses the book back on the bed, casual in her disregard for taking care with Summer’s property. “We played make believe all the time. I kidnapped you and held you for ransom.” She shrugs and stares up at him, defiantly. “It was fun.”

“Maybe we remember some things from childhood differently.”

“It’s not a maybe.”

All he can do with that is nod.

This time, it’s Qrow who walks away first, but Raven hardly seems to notice.

*

It isn’t always fighting and frustration when all four of them are together, even if that’s often how it feels looking back on any given week. The truth is that when they’re fighting together, side by side, they’re almost unbeatable.

The other teams and their teachers start to take notice.

“We have a target on our backs,” Raven declares during breakfast one morning, scowling across the lip of a cup of freshly squeezed juice. “We need to keep an eye on the other teams.”

“For once, we agree.”

Raven puts down her cup and considers the peel of a banana as she slowly pulls it apart. “Brother, please tell your partner that I didn’t ask for his thoughts.”

Moments like this are why it always seems worse looking back. “Raven, this is generally how conversations go.” 

“Not the ones I’ve had.” She starts to take a bite, but hesitates, still not looking anyone in the eye. “… but if any of you have a suggestion, that might be useful.” She eats most of the actual banana in a single bite and stares directly at Tai, half a challenge.

Tai takes a break from pushing the fruit on his plate around with his fork, as though that might suddenly entice him into eating it, to answer instead. “Maybe we should make a list of things we’ve noticed. Like how Glynda doesn’t like when Summer answers faster than her in classes.”

Raven is instantly back to looking exasperated. “How am I supposed to know who—”

“Telekinesis,” Qrow cuts in. “Blonde hair. Green eyes.”

Raven scoffs. “Oh, that one.” She shakes her head. “I can’t stand her.”

“You can’t stand anyone.”

But Summer frowns, studying Tai’s face. “Are you really sure? Maybe she’s just focused in class.”

“Focused on how much she doesn’t like you maybe.”

“Imagine that,” Raven mumbles into her next sip of juice. 

“She always seems nice to me between classes,” Summer says, still frowning, still unsure. “Maybe it’s a misunderstanding.” She puts her fork down and considers the other tables around them in the dining hall. “Maybe if I—”

Tai tugs Summer back into her seat the moment she starts to stand. “You can go make friends later, sunshine. We’re still having a team meeting.”

Raven smirks but doesn’t say anything, for now. 

Qrow takes the blessed (probably brief) silence as his cue to fill in his own observation. “I’m less worried about classes—”

Tai laughs. “You don’t say!”

“—than I am about other students who seem to care too much about our team in battle.” Qrow instinctively looks toward his sister for support on this. “Some people are just interested in weapons for their own sake, but the way some of these people stare…” Raven nods, and he continues. “It feels like more.”

“What kind of more?”

*

They don’t learn what kind of more it is until the midway point of their second year.

By then the legend of team STRQ has grown even beyond the hallways of Beacon. They are sometimes recognized in the street, by people in need of help. 

Occasionally, it’s true, they might be hurried away by a shopkeeper who seems to remember Raven as the surly one who annoyed other customers with her glaring. 

But usually, it’s a more positive association. 

Even though they’re still so young and surrounded by other teams with more experience and fundamental skills, they have the distinct advantage of their teamwork. The combination of the four of them should never have worked, but it does. It’s a testament to all of them, of course, but Summer in particular. 

By second year, Raven has given up on criticizing Summer every time they talk. Sometimes she even acts like something an outside observer could mistake for polite, based only on the words and not the tone of their delivery. 

Raven is never going to be considered overly kind based only on her demeanor, but she doesn’t seem as focused on saying hurtful things as she once was. 

Slowly, she’s learned that it can be just as useful to win a person to your side as pushing them away. 

Especially someone as easily won as Summer. She isn’t stupid, but she is so often concerned with the happiness of others, not only as individuals but as a collective. All the traits that make her a good leader also make her easy to get along with. The ways she studies and understands the needs of her team are also reflected in her interactions with others. She makes her team irreplaceable and necessary through her immediate and innate understanding of what other people need.

They offer assistance in minor problems before most people even realize that they need to ask for help, even in times when the task is so small. 

Not everything is combat with Grimm.

Sometimes the people in a given town just need the reassurance of a hunter in training ready to lend a helping hand. There are some students that might consider it an insult to be asked to climb a ladder to the highest shelf in an antique bookstore only to climb back down again when the item isn’t where it’s meant to be; cleaning roofs and repairing damage done by Grimm; or walking a small group of children safely to class. 

None of this is really what they’re training for.

But Qrow doesn’t mind, as long as he gets some kind of recognition after. A thank you is nice, but coin is even better. 

One woman in particular sometimes asks him inside to join her for a meal after he helps with tasks around her house. Her wife was killed in an attack by Grimm, and now there are all these little things that have piled up and made life even harder. It’s pain and loneliness like that which can attract even more Grimm into a city. 

Helping in these small ways is something a hunter is good for.

So Qrow gives her a hand some days, not too often, with carrying or moving things around. He’s even helped her clean or make the bed; he knows how to do organization better than most. He can tidy and he still knows how to help with some of the cooking, and especially the cleaning up after. His knife work is still excellent.

But more than all that, he is just there. 

When the meal is ready, they talk. He listens to stories about her day and her plans for the next one. He listens. They eat and they laugh. She pours another glass of wine. 

The taste reminds him of long nights near the fire talking to the elders in a place he used to call home. 

He returns to the dorms after, feeling light and easy, and collapses into his new bed. The sheets were made, but he doesn’t care to pull them aside. Qrow lies there, buzzing with a sense of endless possibility, and considers the long lithe male figure stretched out above Tai’s bed before sleep overtakes him.

*

The reputation they’ve built for teamwork and individual exceptionalism continues into the classroom too. Even Ozpin seems to have noticed.

He asks Raven to his office one day, in front of everyone else in the team, and of course she doesn’t say what they talk about. Not to Qrow, at least. 

Summer acts as if she might know. As though she’s had the conversation too, or one like it. 

“Maybe it’s a contract,” Tai speculates around a mouthful of apple, his back resting against a tree. 

“Wouldn’t he have all of us there?” 

“Summer’s team leader. She could relay it to us.” 

Qrow shakes his head. “Why would anyone trust my sister with anything?” 

Tai laughs. “That’s not fair. She’s reliable.”

He seems to really mean it, too. Qrow feels some pity for him, for not seeing the things right in front of his face, but he doesn’t say so. “She’s not team leader.”

Tai doesn’t have an answer to that one, and just days later when he’s the one pulled aside to talk he can’t hide it from his face after. 

That’s the only reason Qrow knows it’s happened. That evasive and uneasy look in Tai’s eyes gives everything away. He’s no good at telling lies, not real ones. It settles on him like a weight, even hunching his shoulders slightly. 

“So what’s the story?” Qrow asks only when they’re alone in the dorm room. “Ozpin want us on some assignment?” 

Tai doesn’t even glance in his direction. “Something like that.”

Qrow watches the way the other man moves, how he evades. He’s suddenly found something fascinating about the fourth corner post of his bed. 

“Only like that?” Qrow waits, but Tai still doesn’t turn to look at him. “In what ways is it different?” 

“In ways you should probably hear from him.” Finally, he does turn, and for the first time that Qrow can really remember, Tai is actually frowning. “I’m sorry. I want to tell you, but—”

“But what?” 

There is more anger in Qrow’s voice than he means for there to be, but he doesn’t feel any remorse for it. 

“I don’t know how to say it.” 

It’s not a good enough answer, but it’s the only one that Qrow gets.

*

If what Ozpin wants out of them is their teamwork and the finest of their skills — Summer’s honesty and Tai’s exuberant joy, for example — he’s doing everything he can to undo it all. Tai carries his guilt for days, like an anxious squirming in his chest.

It changes his posture and demeanor in class. He is anxious and avoidant.

Worse than that is the way it doesn’t seem to impact Summer in the slightest. Her secrets don’t alter her at all. She still smiles openly and easily, and talks with Qrow as if nothing is wrong. 

As if they are still four instead of three and one. 

It makes him wonder, for the very first time, what else she could have been hiding. 

Raven is just as unchanged, but at least that comes as no surprise. When he tries to ask her, to talk about anything at all, she only tells him to wait. “He’ll come for you too,” she says, as dramatic as she can possibly be. 

She’s always had that kind of flair. 

And she’s right. He comes for Qrow too. Of course he does.

But he waits longer with him than he did between all the rest, and Qrow can’t help but think — he’s doing a lot of that lately — about what it means. He wonders if Ozpin is studying them all, the way their team morphs and changes under the weight of this dishonesty. 

When Ozpin finally tells him the truth about everything, how his whole world is different than he always thought it was, it’s almost a relief. At least he knows now. They are four again.

Sure, maybe there are people who can do incredible things without Dust. There are lots of people who can do things Qrow can’t. It doesn’t have to be such a big deal. Just one more threat to prepare for. 

What bothers him — still bothers him — is the dishonesty and deception. 

Maybe it shouldn’t. Lying for a purpose comes easy enough to him and his sister. They’ve been doing it since they first learned how to speak, even if his lies occasionally catch up to him in the worst ways. That’s just a learning experience. He got better. The lies became more convincing. 

With enough practice, anyone can become very good at deception, and it seems like Ozpin has had a lot of time to learn.

It’s not the idea of lying itself that bothers Qrow, but the destruction of their team’s unity. It doesn’t feel like an accident as much as something that never even crossed this headmaster’s mind. 

But the team is everything. 

That’s why Qrow waits until the story is over to finally speak, and the first words out of his mouth are a very different question than Ozpin seems to expect. “Are you going to lie to us again? My team and I.”

His hands are folded in front of his face, half-concealing what Qrow thinks is the very start of a smile. “I beg your pardon.” 

“You don’t.” Qrow is slouched in his chair and doesn’t bother to sit any straighter. He wants his posture to say how much he doesn’t care for or about this conversation, no matter how life altering it’s meant to be. “But you’re not going to do this to my team again, are you?”

“Do what?”

“Pit us against each other.” 

Ozpin drops his hands away. If there had been a smile, it’s gone now. “I don’t intend to do anything but make you better as a whole.” 

“For what purpose?” 

But there it is again. That faint smile. “If I say it’s to save the world, I imagine you’ll dislike that answer as overly vague.” He shrugs. “But it’s the one I’m going to give you.”

Qrow sighs. He can’t help it. “Do you get away with being so annoying just by being old?”

“That and a few other things.” 

Qrow doesn’t stick around to find out what that means. 

He’s done with cryptic nonsense for the day. 

“Goodbye, Mr. Branwen,” Ozpin calls out to his back as he walks away. “Send my regards to your sister.”

*

Qrow does not give any regards to Raven; he’s not entirely sure that she would accept them.

Instead, they all talk, the four of them sitting with each of them on their own bed.

Qrow tries to ignore how much distance this puts between them, saying, “Do we think he knows where these maidens are?”

“I’m sure he does,” Raven says. It’s the first thing she’s said on the topic at all. “He knows plenty of things he’s not saying.” She glances quickly at Summer and then back over to Qrow. She smiles. “I’m sure he told all of us a different version of events too.”

“We could work that out pretty easily, if we talk more.”

Summer lets out a single, annoyed huff of air. “Stop trying to cause discontent.”

“I’m not trying to cause anything. I’m being realistic about what’s here.” Her smile is so sharp and unkind. “But if our fearless leader wants to play make believe, we can all try that too.”

“Raven,” Qrow says, just her name. Just that. It’s his usual attempt to make his sister stop.

It’s never worked.

“No, it’s fine. We can all just pretend that four women with greater power than anyone else running around, doing what they like, isn’t a threat to every single one of us.” As Raven continues, the words gain momentum and so does her voice. It’s rising and her shoulders are too, tensing higher. She’s sharp and angry angles with her mouth drawn straight into a thin line. “Why did he tell us this if it wasn’t to make us ready to fight?”

Tai looks startled and confused. “But we’re not an army.” 

“What do you think we’ve been training to do here?” Raven sneers, and Tai looks chastened. He looks down at his hands and Raven turns her head away from him. “If Summer or I were to kill one of these women, does that mean we’d have her powers?”

“ _Raven_.”

She rolls her eyes at Qrow. “I’m only speaking academically, of course. Just trying to better understand the concepts our headmaster has revealed to us, _brother_.”

The talk doesn’t help things at all.

*

Every time they start to draw back together, it feels like something is there to pull them apart again.

But just like that, the work (the team) will always pull them back in.

The first inkling Qrow gets that things might start to settle back into a familiar and comfortable rhythm is the talk of a combat tournament to take place soon. If nothing else can sway Raven back to her team, her competitive nature certainly can.

He doesn’t even have to be the one to approach. She comes to him. “You’ve heard of this—” She scowls, instinctively disliking the implications of the word. “—Festival. I know you have.”

“I have.”

“We’re going to win it.” 

Qrow can barely resist the impulse to smile. “We might.”

“We will,” Raven insists and elbows him harder than she really needs to just to make a point. “I’m going to tell Summer next. We need to train.”

As with so many things, Summer already seems to know.

*

They train together, as a team, and any distance of the past week or two evaporates under the sweat and strain. Summer, so often careful and soft spoken, is decisive and loud when it comes to her team. She calls out attacks to execute and they react.

It’s the only time that Raven doesn’t argue. She is too focused on the doing, the winning. 

The only person she has ever let tell her what to do is Summer, after all.

The only praise Raven seems to care for is Summer’s. 

“Good job,” she says, and Raven’s usual smirk is softer. She doesn’t argue or even say something sharp or sarcastic. She just nods, accepting the compliment. 

Tai and Qrow exchange a look, but they say nothing.

*

This year the Vytal Festival is to be held in Mistral. Raven catches Qrow’s eye across the crowded room when they’re told, and she looks close to laughing, but otherwise they don’t talk about it until the night before they’re ready to leave.

“Are you ready to go home now, brother?” Raven asks in a low whisper. 

She is standing too close for Qrow to make eye contact without turning his head too obviously. Maybe it’s easier that he doesn’t have to look at her when he scoffs softly, saying, “Is that where we’re going?” 

Since he isn’t looking, he doesn’t realize Raven’s going to take hold of him by the shoulder until she does it, rough and sharp. “You remember who you are, don’t you?”

“Stop being so dramatic.”

“Stop being so callous.” She gives him a small shove. “You know who our people are. The real ones.” 

Qrow breathes out and shakes his head. “We’re not even going to see them. Not without drawing attention to ourselves.”

“But they will be _close_. They’re going to be watching us.” Raven stands straighter, as sharp and precise as her blade. “They’re going to be proud.” 

“Oh, what a relief.” 

She’s scowling, even more than usual. “I didn’t expect you to disappoint me this much.” 

“I always love to exceed expectations.” 

Raven looks ready to say more, but then Tai comes into the room and she drops short. All that’s left is frustrated, unspoken anger. 

“Sorry, did I—”

But Tai doesn’t get to ask his question before Raven storms out the door, bumping him hard in the shoulder. 

The look he gives Qrow is openly confused. 

“Don’t worry about it.” Qrow sighs. “She’s just worried about tomorrow.”

It’s something like that, at least.

*

The last time the two of them rode an airship between Vale and Mistral feels like a lifetime ago. Maybe it was. The people they were then were almost a full two years younger, and Qrow at least knew a lot less, even about the kingdom he came from.

They’d never even heard of the Vytal Festival — a fact that many of their fellow students laughed about when Qrow made the mistake to look openly confused when it was first discussed — but now they’re here, ready to represent Beacon Academy as one of the few teams selected.

But not the only team. 

“You look queasy,” Glynda Goodwitch declares to the ship at large, but maybe it’s mostly directed at Qrow who she is standing just in front of. “Do you not fly often?”

She has almost never spoken to him before outside of class, and it takes Qrow a quick glance in either direction to be certain she’s really doing it now. “… no, it’s not that. I’m fine.”

“So you’re nervous then. You don’t think your team will win.” 

“I didn’t realize you read other people’s thoughts as well as moving things with your own.” Just to make it absolutely clear how confident and unconcerned he is, Qrow shifts his posture into a more casual slouch. “I just have a lot of things on my mind. None of them are really your concern either.”

“Of course.” 

But she’s still standing there, eyeing him up and down. 

Qrow is suddenly conscious of his open shirt collar and the way her eyes linger there for a moment. He smirks and Glynda rolls her eyes, just on the verge of saying something very snide and unconcerned when Tai makes his presence known with his characteristic volume and enthusiasm.

“You two sharing strategies to take out the enemy?” 

Glynda visibly grimaces at the volume, but straightens back into smug confidence right after. “I don’t require Mr. Branwen’s help when it comes to strategy.”

“Well, my particular area of expertise is more physical.” Qrow winks and Glynda looks annoyed enough she could spit. (It’s not as discouraging a response as she might think.) “I could show you sometime, if you want.”

The only response from Glynda is a sharp breath out, accented by disgust and annoyance that she has to go out of her way to step around Tai when she turns to go. 

“I think that went well,” Qrow says with a wide grin and a second wink, this time directed at Tai. 

Who doesn’t look as amused or pleased. “She was just trying to get something out of you.” His arms are folded across his chest, his posture stiff and unrelenting. “You understand that, right? Even you.”

Qrow isn’t sure what’s made Tai’s mood sour so fast, but it’s making him sit up a little straighter too. He frowns, and studies his friend’s face for any sign of what’s caused his annoyance. “There’s plenty I understand, Tai.” But not this, actually. Not now.

“I don’t always get the sense that you do.” 

It’s cruel. 

Crueler than Tai means for it to be, judging by the sudden startled look on his face right after he speaks. There’s almost an apology there, right on his tongue, but Qrow doesn’t want to hear it. Somehow that would make the hurt only worse, more real. 

He stands quickly, and they’re too close to each other. It makes his chest compress strangely. “That sounds like my cue to go study then…” 

The airship is too small for Qrow to have anywhere much to go, but limitations have never slowed him down before. 

He walks.

Until he reaches the furthest end of the ship hold, Qrow just walks, his heartbeat pounding loudly in his ears. 

“You look like you’ve seen a ghost.”

It’s the first time Qrow has seen Raven all morning. He started to think she was deliberately avoiding him, and maybe she was. This is just about as far away from where he’d been sitting as a person could possibly be.

“Nah,” Qrow answers, hoping his voice doesn’t give away any of his thoughts. “You’re not that pale.” 

Raven doesn’t laugh, she seldom does, but she does smirk at him in a less annoyed manner than she sometimes does. That’s close to something. “Nothing wrong, I hope.”

“Would you care if there was?” 

“I want us to win. For all we know, this Festival comes with a huge monetary prize.” 

Oh, of course. Qrow could almost laugh. “Money. Right.” 

“Think what it could do for the tribe,” Raven continues, undeterred by her brother’s slowly growing sneer. “Your elders—”

“Are not my elders anymore. They’re all dead, and we weren’t there to see it.” 

“You can’t know that.”

“You’re right, I can’t. Because we haven’t been home to see anything.” Raven blinks at him, tries not to register anything on her face, but in an instant he knows. “… oh, I see.”

“Qrow—”

“We haven’t gone home to see anyone. But you have.” 

“It’s more complicated than that.” 

If Qrow thought his heart was beating loudly before, this is on another level. “Must make it a lot simpler to keep everything to yourself, right sis?” His own head sounds like the inside of a drum. 

The pounding is relentless.

“Now who’s being dramatic?” 

“Sneaking around in the middle of the night, running off to see our family without me, I’d say it’s still you.” 

Every fight he’s ever had with Raven always ends the same, in that it doesn’t end. They argue, they say what hurts them, they try to hurt each other, and then they both stop talking; but the feelings linger long after. 

This time it’s an announcement across the speaker system of the airship telling them that they are close to landing that stops both their voices, without really ending the fight. 

“Come on,” Raven says, an unfamiliar weariness there in her voice. “We need to find the others.”

“The rest of our team,” Qrow says, as if he’s reminding her. 

She doesn’t look pleased, but doesn’t say anything more. This is how the fighting lasts. 

They walk together in uneasy and unhappy silence, in search of their bags and their team, and Qrow thinks about long past happy nights with his sister and others around the fire with their tribe. He thinks about drawn out lunches with his new friend in town. 

He thinks he wants a glass of wine.


	3. one and none

*

No matter how hard they train, it’s impossible to prepare for the unpredictability of other people.

Isn’t that what they came to Beacon to learn in the first place? Each Hunter and Huntress is their own challenge, and a team of them working together can really be a nightmare.

No wonder Raven’s so concerned with winning the Festival. 

If they can conquer all these other teams, would it mean that they’ve learned all they need to? Would they finally be ready to go home?

It turns out it’s not a question Qrow has to find an answer to.

*

The first round is easy enough. As a team, they feel almost unstoppable, even when they’ve been arguing between themselves. All of that can be set aside, when it comes to competition.

The greatest challenge is Summer having to make the decision for which two of them should continue on together into the next round. 

In the end, it was probably always going to be the twins. 

“We don’t just come as a set, you know.” 

Raven scowls. She doesn’t seem to find anything funny right now, not when she’s focused. “She’s right. We know each other better than most will. We’re effective.” 

“And you can have my back, very literally.” 

“That too,” Raven says in the tone of voice of someone who hasn’t considered that a priority at all.

Summer shrugs. “You two fight well together.”

*

And they do.

What’s most frustrating about their second fight is how well they do together. There’s an ease to fighting alongside Raven that Qrow had nearly forgotten with so much time focused on his own partner. 

Fighting with Tai is motivating and inspiring; they make a good team. 

But nothing feels like it does to fight with Raven beside him. He turns his head and knows that Tai will be there, but with his sister he doesn’t even have to look. He knows where she is, without having to see. He reaches out his hand and she grabs hold of him by the wrist, hurling herself forward with the momentum of a single movement. 

They move like dancing. A ballet of death and destruction. 

Raven has never been afraid of anything, and it shows in how she fights. She is relentless, striking with blow after blow. She never seems to tire, even as her muscles strain and she becomes soaked with sweat. 

Her aura throbs with sustained blows, and she barely flinches. 

She doesn’t hesitate, in fact the next swing that comes at her she doesn’t bother to defend, saving all her strength for her counterattack. Qrow takes note of all of this in an instant before focusing on his own assailant. 

Another scythe wielder.

This should be easy. So much so that he laughs, calling out, “Does yours only do just the one thing?” His weapon switches and straightens out into its single bladed form. “How boring for you.” She lunges and takes a swing at him — they so often do, so easily baited — and he triggers the switch halfway through his next swing, hooking the edge of her scythe with his own. “Boring, but we can still have some fun.” 

The woman snarls her annoyance, and Qrow feels his adrenaline start to spike. 

Here it comes. 

When their blades collide again, the impact rattles all the way up his arm. He feels it in his shoulders, where he flexes, twists, and uses his momentum to send her several steps back with the next forceful hit. The woman blows strands of curly red hair from her face with a huff of exhaled air. She grimaces, but deflects the next hit with the edge of her blade. 

“Alright,” she says, her voice so level and calm that it gives Qrow pause in his next swing. “Let’s have some fun.” She adjusts her grip on the snath of her scythe and rotates her wrist sharply.

A second blade appears at the end.

Qrow lets out a startled but pleased laugh. He breathes in deeply and feels something like happiness swelling inside his chest. “Oh, _yeah_.” He smiles and spins his own weapon across the back of his shoulders, switching hands. “Let’s dance, beautiful.”

“Don’t call—”

“Oh, I was talking to your weapon.” 

Her smirk in response is almost appreciative. They’re really starting to understand each other. “You talk too much,” she laughs, and charges in swinging. 

They exchange more hits, matching each other with every blow, and it’s only a short time before Qrow starts to feel it building up. The ache isn’t only in his muscles, but deep and tensing in his bones. She hits hard, endlessly, and he’s barely touched her aura at all. There are so few openings to land on target.

She isn’t as easily baited as most of the opposition Qrow has faced — except for his sister. 

His sister. 

He turns his head for a moment to glimpse Raven’s blade shattering against the shield of her opponent. The man pivots, swinging the weapon in his off-hand, but she dodges and retrieves another blade from her sheath in a single movement.

She has things under control.

Qrow smiles to himself, pleased with his sister’s clear competency, and turns his head back just in time to take the blade of his opponent’s scythe right in his left shoulder. 

“Pay attention,” the woman growls, charging her full weight into him and knocking him back. “Or don’t. It makes my job a lot easier.” 

He sprawls in the dirt, momentarily dazed and clumsy, but his recovery time is fast. 

Qrow is used to standing back up again.

There’s not a lot of pride left in the way either. That’s why he can turn to run, without even a moment’s pause, maneuvering across the expanse of desert terrain and calling out in the direction of the mountainous foothills where his sister’s blade is sending a trail of flaming sparks into the air with every guarded attack. 

It makes her very easy to find. 

“Raven! Some help, please!” 

Raven is tactically quick and perceptive. She only needs to turn her head for a brief moment to take it all in. She nods once but grunts in vague annoyance before turning to strike her opponent (sharply) with her elbow. She ducks (easily) beneath his next swing before she turns to run too.

They run right at each other, even strides with similarly long legs, and a red tear through reality appears between them to close the distance.

Qrow goes in one side and Raven through the other, swapping places. 

Before the man who had been Raven’s target has time to realize and react, Qrow jams his scythe into the ground to vault himself upward and forward at an accelerated pace, springing across the remaining distance and landing with a punch aimed directly at the guy’s admittedly pretty perfect jaw. 

It’s alright. Nothing perfect is really made to last anyway.

He recoils, stumbling back, and quickly raises the shield protruding from his gauntlet, but Qrow’s ready for that. He hooks his own curved blade underneath the edge of the shield, twists and lifts, exposing the man’s entire left side to a few more rapid punches. 

The follow up attack from the man’s short blade is to be expected. It’s obvious and Qrow steps aside without any problem.

“Come on, did you really not see this coming?” Qrow laughs, ready to try his usual baiting tactics on this one, at least. “Maybe you should have spent some time studying your opponents.” 

Not that he did that. 

Summer had said a few things, just before they started, but Qrow doesn’t remember any of it. Probably wasn’t that important. 

“You think I’m impressed?” The man laughs and slams the shield forward, directly into Qrow’s primary scythe wielding arm. It stings, and momentarily stuns him. “You definitely didn’t do any homework either.” 

A wavy blue hole appears in the world just behind the other challenger, and Qrow feels a sudden sinking sensation in his stomach as he watches the man step back through it and disappear from view. 

Almost disappear.

There’s something visible through the other side and it takes Qrow a brief but agonizing moment to realize that the blurry figure he can see through the hole in the world is himself. He turns his head just in time to see the next blow coming right at his face, but there’s no time to react. It lands, and he steps back. 

It hurts like crazy, and so does the next hit. He raises his weapon to block the follow up, but it comes from the other direction. First left, and then right. The man is moving too quickly for him to react, pulling holes in the fabric of the world wherever he wants to.

This is so much better than Raven’s semblance, honestly, that Qrow realizes in an instant how much it’s going to annoy her. Maybe even to the point of distraction.

This is not good. 

It’s somewhere around the eight or ninth blow that he manages to duck and charge into the man’s legs to take him out long enough to end the ceaseless assault and land a few hits aimed at the slightly shorter man’s head. 

“Very good,” Qrow laughs between hits. “Very clever.” 

From across the field, there’s a sudden and shattering sound similar to an explosion. 

Heart pounding, Qrow turns his head just in time to see an enormous fireball engulf so much of the desert that the sand begins to rapidly crystalize from the heat. Raven’s name flashes across the scoreboard, her aura drained in an instant. 

She’s out.

Underneath him, Qrow hears the man laugh from behind the shield that he’s managed to maneuver into the small space between them. “Thanks for swapping, by the way.” Qrow’s heartbeat pulses so loudly in his own ears that he just barely hears the rest of it. Something about fire Dust and the redhead’s semblance. 

It’s enough for him to put it all together. 

“She charges up with fire.”

“Smart boy.” 

That sharp crackling sound might be the world shattering around him, or probably it’s the a trail of sand rapidly hardening as the redhead propels herself across the desert with blasts of compressed nitrogen. 

“Well, shit,” Qrow has time to say before she slams into him at full force, blade extended.

It hurts. Oh boy, does it hurt.

*

When Qrow regains full consciousness, Tai and Summer are standing over his bed, but Raven is nowhere to be seen.

That’s probably to be expected.

“Hey, pal,” Tai says, his voice lower than usual, as though he means for it to be soothing. It’s unsettling in its abnormality, more than anything else. “How’re you feeling?” 

“Woozy,” Qrow groans, sitting up slowly. 

He’s never had so much of his aura drained all at once, and the effects still linger in all parts of his body. His head aches and his muscles feel stiff and unwieldy. He shifts his position, gingerly, and the world swims in front of his eyes. 

Qrow has never had a hangover like this one. 

Summer’s hand is on his shoulder, gentle but steady. “Go easy.” She squeezes and then relents, giving him the room to move and making way for wounded pride. 

They don’t have to treat him so delicately. 

It’s not the first time he’s been dropped in the dirt, even if it feels worse than usual. (A lot worse.) “Hey, I’m always easy.”

“Don’t I know it?” 

Qrow doesn’t have to turn to look to know that Tai just winked at him. He laughs, an amiable and only slightly breathless sound. It really even hurts to breathe right now. “How’s she doing?”

“Angrier than you are.” Tai shrugs. “So same as ever.” 

He nods, feeling the ache settling all along his back and pulsing just at his shoulders. It’s not just breathing that hurts. Sitting perfectly still, also. That hurts too. “Do you know if the person she’s angriest at is—”

“You complete idiot.” 

“—yeah, I could have guessed that.” Qrow turns his head to see his sister looming in the doorway. She looks larger than usual, like some kind of dark shadow, but sharper at all of her edges. “If I had known she she was charged up by fire, I wouldn’t have swapped with you.”

“Obviously.” Even her voice is bristling. “But you might have known if you had made any effort to bait her into using her semblance earlier instead of needing me to save your hide.” 

“I didn’t _need_ —”

“You literally called my name.”

Okay, yeah. He had done that. Good point. “I didn’t think you’d listen.” 

“I always listen, baby brother.” 

He scoffs, loudly, and even that much hurts like crazy, so that the sound is immediately followed by a shallow wheezing. “We’re the same age.” 

“You could have fooled me.” 

When they get like this, Tai always hangs back, frowning and disapproving but never quite engaging. 

It’s Summer who interjects; she can never let them continue like this. “You both did very well. You made us proud.”

“If losing is enough to make you proud, perhaps you shouldn’t continue to lead us.”

“I wasn’t finished,” Summer cuts in, some of the softness gone from her voice. “I wasn’t your leader today. If either of you listened fully to my instructions before the fight, you might have won. This is what you look like when you lead yourselves.” Her gaze cuts over in Raven’s direction, never once flinching under his sister’s hard glare. “It’s lacking.”

“… perhaps.” 

“Do you need more evidence than something right in front of your face?” Summer’s slight smile at that is not pleasant. Qrow has never seen her look so hard or unrelenting. “I thought you were smarter than that. Partner.”

“I thought you were smarter than these words,” Raven responds quickly. “You must know better than to make me angry, girl.”

Summer shakes her head, just the slightest movement. Otherwise, she doesn’t look away. She hasn’t blinked. “You know my name. And I know you.” She moves so quickly, crossing the room without even seeming to move. Maybe it’s that speed that catches Raven off guard, and keeps her from pulling away. Because Summer’s hand is on her shoulder now, just as steady as it had been with Qrow. “We’ll do better next time.” 

“There isn’t a next time,” Raven mumbles, turning her face away to avoid looking Summer in the eye from this close. Her eyes land on Qrow’s face instead, and some of the anger (close to hatred) flares back into her eyes. Like a fire almost burned out being stoked again. “This was our only chance.”

“There’s always something next.”

Qrow understands what Raven is thinking. That’s never how it was with the tribe. There was only ever the exact task set before you. The thing you needed to do to earn your place, to keep yourself and others fed. There is never another chance. 

There’s so seldom forgiveness either, and so Raven has never asked for or wanted it. 

This is how a fight can last forever. 

“Well, if something’s next,” Raven says, her voice so quiet that Qrow can barely hear it over his own heavy heartbeat, the ringing that lingers in his ears. “What do we do now?” 

“Another assignment from Ozpin,” Summer answers readily, as though she’s prepared the answer for some time. “More Grimm to kill, or maybe something bigger.” 

Qrow chuckles, used to having to interpret for her sister. “I think she means tonight.” 

“Oh.” 

Raven smirks, in the gentlest way she knows how. “We don’t have to stick around and watch these strangers fight, do we?” 

“Oh, no.” Summer shrugs. “I don’t see any reason we should.” 

“Fuck ‘em.” Qrow stands too fast, but tries not to show his nausea on his face.

Summer nods. “Fuck ‘em.”

“Let’s explore a little around Mistral instead,” Tai suggests, his posture and voice lifting, hopeful. “I hear it’s beautiful.” 

This time it’s Qrow who looks over at Raven, trying to catch her eye, but she refuses to glance even once in his direction. 

This is how a fight can last a lifetime.

*

Summer and Raven leave first, eager to explore. (Summer is eager, at least, and Raven is oddly compliant. Willing to help.) The plan is to all meet up again later, after Qrow has a little longer to rest and recover.

The resting is probably meant to happen alone. Even he knows that. 

It’s not his fault, is it, if someone comes to the door and knocks, so polite and proper, and maybe he’s not wearing a shirt when he answers but there’s bandages there. Some of him is covered. 

None of this can really be said to be his fault.

Because he’s surprised to see Glynda waiting on the other side and she seems just as surprised to see him without his shirt. Both of them do a very bad job of hiding it. 

“Oh, you’re still unwell.”

Qrow glances down at himself. The bruises are there, angry and purple, but so is the sharp definition of his abs. When he looks back up, a smirk is carefully in place on his face, eager and charming. “Does it look that bad?”

Glynda is so careful to avoid looking or any other potential impropriety that her eyes are focused on the wall just past his shoulder. “Somewhat.” 

“Oh, well. I’m sorry then.” Qrow takes a step back, but he still lingers near the door with one hand braced against it. “But you did come wake me up.” 

“I thought you might be…” 

“Less naked?” 

“Mm.” 

Qrow tilts his head, considering her face carefully. “I’m sorry to hear it’s such a problem for you.”

Glynda finally turns her head to look him in the eyes. “It just makes this conversation that much more difficult.” He considers asking which conversation she could mean, but he’s found that Glynda seems to prefer to take the lead. Qrow can give a lady what she wants. “Could you just put… anything on top of—” She gestures in the direction of his torso. “All of this?” 

“Only if you’re sure that’s what you want.” Qrow does back away more this time, leaving the door open behind him in case she wants to come inside. It’s up to her entirely; he doesn’t even bother glancing back to know. “So what is it you wanted to talk about?” He pulls a shirt on over his head, mussing up his hair, before turning back around. “Can I help with something?”

“… perhaps.” 

This time it’s his hair that Glynda’s eyes are locked on. Qrow runs a hand through it, a little self-conscious and unsure. “You want to give me some kind of hint here?”

“I’m not sure a hint will suffice.” Her eyes are on his now, and he can’t begin to understand what he sees there. “You don’t seem very bright.” 

Admittedly, while he can’t read her mind — and obviously she can tell — that doesn’t suddenly make it any less rude to basically call him names. “If I can remind you, you’re interrupting my sleep. And you came to me for—”

“Do you want to have sex?” 

He was not expecting that. “What?”

“Sex. I came to you for sex.” Glynda stands straighter and begins to remove her jacket with precise and rapid movements. “If your amenable.”

“If I’m—”

“If you want to have sex. With me.” She flings the jacket from her hands but catches it with her mind, carefully redirecting it over to a side table, where it’s folded up nicely. “Right now.” A beat of silence passes, and she adds. “With much less talking than this.”

“I, uh.” Something about this definitely feels like a trick. Or a trap. But Qrow agrees, it definitely feels like his brain is doing too much talking, even for him. “… sure,” he says, reaching a conclusion without any real help from his mind at all. “Sounds fine.”

Glynda rolls her eyes. “I appreciate your enthusiasm. Very flattering.”

“Well, I—” 

She holds up her hand. “Please. Less talking and less clothing.” 

Qrow looks down at himself, blinking and somewhat annoyed. “… I just put this on.” 

“Yes, because I wanted it on then, and now I don’t.” She sighs and rapidly sends a chair sliding underneath the doorknob, blocking access entirely. “Please try to keep up.” She begins to remove her shirt next, one button at a time. “I intend to set a steady pace.” When Qrow doesn’t instantly respond by pulling off his shirt, Glynda adds a few sharp finger snaps. “Focus, please!” 

He does feel focused. His eyes catch on her neckline first, the curve of her collarbone, and then— 

Well, she is very well built, all in all. 

He grins and pulls his shirt off as quickly as he can, eager to keep his view unobscured as long as possible. 

For her part, Glynda does not seem impressed. She rolls her eyes and sends the remainder of her clothing flying to join the jacket on the bedside table, all neat and organized, just as precise as her words as she approaches him, saying, “Lay back now.” She licks her lips and so does he, eagerly complying. “As I said, I’ll set the pace.” 

She does.

*

The sex is steady and rough in its own way.

Mostly it’s the way where half his body feels like screaming from any source of friction or pressure, and there is plenty of both. She pulls his hair a little as she rides him — his own participation feels largely optional, as far as Glynda is concerned — and scratches her nails down his chest until he whimpers once in protest. 

“Sorry,” she pants, curling her hands along the curve of his jaw instead. She grabs his hair again and pulls, hard. “Sorry,” she breathes again, and he doesn’t think that she means it.

“It’s fine,” he pants back, not very dignified at all as he tries not to wince or look too overwhelmed by the rushing, swirling pounding headache that accompanies every thrust. 

Maybe this was a terrible idea.

Probably it’s an even worse one when they finish and, struggling to catch his breath, he kneels down beside the bed to repay the gesture and instead she gently pushes him away. 

There are probably things more mortifying than that, but he can’t think of any right now.

“No, thank you.” She gives his face a small shove, dragging fingers back through his sweaty strands of hair. “I’m quite satisfied.” 

_Anyone who can describe it as “quite satisfied” after probably isn’t_ , Qrow thinks to himself a little dazed and confused on his knees. 

But not wanting to pressure or protest, what he says is, “Oh, okay.”

He tries to ignore the pinched in expression of annoyance and distaste on Glynda’s face as her clothes fly back into her hands and are rapidly returned to her body. “Thank you.” As each button is fastened, she seems to stand a little straighter, more confident. “That was very enlightening, and I’m never doing it again.” 

Qrow blinks, wishing that any part of his brain could catch up to the admittedly very unpleasant place his body is in right now. “… okay?”

He considers whether or not he should stand up again, or if it might draw too much attention to the fact that he’s still on his knees near his bed, nowhere near where Glynda is standing now. 

If anything, she seems to be retreating away from him, rapidly. “It’s nothing personal, to be clear.” She adjusts her shirt collar carefully. Her back is still to Qrow, so he takes the chance to stand again. “No more men at all. Or… boys.” For the first time, she does glance back his way, almost a little sheepish. “I’m sure you understand.” 

Qrow doesn’t actually understand, not at first. It takes a moment — just a single long look at Glynda’s carefully contained but earnest expression — for him to understand. That look on her face is more exposed and vulnerable than she had ever seemed while naked. He nods, not wanting her to feel anything but sure. “Of course. And I won’t tell anyone. You can trust me.”

“I know you won’t.” She smiles and draws her jacket toward her, slipping her arms into it without ever slowing down its momentum. “Because if you were that stupid, I’d throw you right off the roof.” 

That’s a joke. Probably. 

Even if she doesn’t appear to laugh at all. 

“Right,” he says, chuckling softly for the both of them. 

Still, she doesn’t laugh. “Goodbye, Mr. Branwen. And have a pleasant rest of your day.” The chair pulls back from the doorknob, clattering across the floor, and she spins on her heel just as fast. 

Like that, she’s gone.

And Qrow is left remembering that he’s supposed to spend the rest of the day with his team.

That suddenly seems like a very dumb idea.

*

But the trip around the edges of Mistral goes well enough.

Qrow will never know what Summer and Raven did or said while they were alone, but the dynamic of their team seems to have shifted again. It adjusted, all on its own. 

They are whole again, not two and two or three and one. 

There are four and then there is everyone else. Us and them. 

It’s nice to have an easy routine again, even if the only consistency is the sense of Us. He can make other patterns for himself. 

Every morning, Qrow and Tai make their beds together. They all have breakfast in the dining hall. Summer talks about their lessons for the day and asks if they’ve all done their course work. Raven pretends to be more interested than she is, waiting until the right moment to ask after their next assignment from Ozpin.

Who does she get to hurt next. 

It’s a routine and it’s welcome. Everything and everyone has their place. 

Sometimes Qrow’s place is in Tai’s bed. It happens, and it’s strangely easy. He falls into it, the way he used to fall from trees. He wakes up in his partner’s arms some mornings and it’s never a part of the discussion. 

Sometimes, Raven looks like she disapproves, but she never approves of anything. It doesn’t have to matter. 

In the end, none of it has to matter longer than it lasts. 

Qrow has always known patience — his climbing, his scythe, and his sister more than anything else — but now he knows that it can be sweet too. Waiting can be sweet. The way that Tai teases him all day long, whispers in his ear and fingertips lingering at his elbow, or looks across a room. 

That can be sweet, the same way that Tai’s smile is. 

“Later,” he says, his mouth warm so close to Qrow’s skin, and all of it is sweet. 

Even the days in between. There isn’t a need to rush and he feels no demands, placed by or on him. They are effortless in their own new way. It doesn’t have to become two and two, to strain or change. They can still be four, in the ways they all adjust and grow together. 

It makes Qrow think of how plants grow in the forest, or Summer’s flowers on the desk. Things grow and change according to the light around them. Animals and people draw closer to warmth. Even Grimm are attracted to living things. 

No matter how the time passes or they change as they grow, they come back together, blossoming like the flowers at Qrow’s bedside when he wakes at the dawn. Their leaves, stretching upward, make him think of Tai. The delicate red petals opening wide and vulnerable remind him of Summer. 

The thorns, of course, are Raven. 

She never quite stops being prickly, but the purpose is just the same as with a flower. She’s protection, her own but also the team’s. Even when it isn’t exactly necessary.

“What are you looking at?” she demands of a first year she catches looking too long in the dining hall. 

“Please don’t make another child cry.” 

But Summer doesn’t sound annoyed; she never does with Raven.

“They need to toughen up,” Raven says, and this time she’s smiling into her glass. 

It’s still strange to see her smile so easily around others, but Qrow realizes that he likes it. “When you were their age, you were pulling the wings off birds.” 

Tai looks up sharply, as if unsure whether or not this is intended as a joke, but smiles at the way Raven rolls her eyes.

So dramatic. 

“Torturing animals is barbaric.” She takes a sip. “They can’t provide you with any intelligence. It’s pointless.” 

Tai laughs, but freezes when he realizes that he’s still not sure if Raven is joking or not. Her expression doesn’t give anything away. 

So Qrow does it for her. “That’s why you only torture people, I forgot.” 

“Mostly you.” 

“I’m the only Qrow you love to hurt.” 

Raven smirks at him, in the same gentle and teasing way she used to look at him before knocking him right into the dirt. “Love is putting it a bit extremely.” 

“I love to exceed expectations.”

Summer clears her throat lightly before interjecting, saying, “On the subject of expectations, Ozpin has another assignment.”

They all grin at that, even Raven. (Even if hers is smaller.)

It’s all so easy, the ways they grow.

*

Even on days where everything doesn’t go right, he doesn’t feel afraid.

This must be what it’s always been like to be Raven.

The enemy isn’t always easy. There are days where they are overwhelmed, overpowered, with their auras so broken down that they start bleeding. 

It’s on one of these days that they learn the meaning of Summer’s eyes. 

They burn bright and hot, a light so sharp it cuts right through him. 

Raven is bleeding, unconscious and limp in Tai’s arms, and Summer’s scream is so loud it seems to vibrate through the center of the trees. The leaves rattle. Birds fly. 

The Grimm fade away. Everything fades away. 

Light sears through the world and all that’s left is the four of them, together in the sun.

*

In ways he never knew were even possible, they grow and change.

But he isn’t afraid.

*

Qrow wakes up one morning to find Tai in Raven’s bed, one of her pale arms draped across him, sunlight spilling across the crisp white sheets and the mountain range of their two bodies pressed together.

He thinks that he should feel something sharp and unpleasant now — fear, anger, regret — but the happiness just lingers. The tribe taught him about sharing, and he can’t deny his sister the sweetest gentleness he’s ever known. 

It shouldn’t be easy, but it still is. 

If Summer is especially kind to him that day, he doesn’t object, but he doesn’t think he needs it.

*

The flowers keep growing, even more beautiful than before.

The licenses come, at last. Raven doesn’t mention returning home. She hasn’t called Mistral “home” in almost a year. (Maybe she’s gone for visits on her own, but Qrow doesn’t ask.) Instead, the four of them talk about making a home somewhere together. 

“We can continue our work,” Summer says, with the practiced care she always uses when she’s been planning to say something for some time. “I’m sure Oz would like us all together in one place.”

“You’re sure?” Qrow laughs. “Harder for him to pit us against each other when I still see all of you everyday.”

Raven gives him a knowing sneer, not as vicious as it could be. “He’s done just fine so far.” 

“We won’t be living here anymore,” Qrow insists, firmly. “Where you live matters. It changes things, for everyone.” 

It’s the first time he’s said anything like it, almost acknowledging their old home, and he can see the way it registers with Raven. She tenses, then quickly looks to see if the rest of them have noticed. They give no sign, which means that Tai hasn’t seen a thing.

It’s always harder to know with Summer, who smiles and nods, simple as that. “I think you’re right. The distance will help us all.”

*

Distance from the rest of the world, that is.

If anything, they only move closer together as a team. They bring the flowers with them, overtaking the outside of the house. The vegetable garden is next, swelling with food to feed them after a long day’s hunt. 

It’s the four of them and then everyone else. 

When Oz calls them in to tell more of his stories — always changing, always teasing that there’s something more to know — they laugh about it together later. Any secrets he might be keeping, they share together when they can. 

When he offers Qrow and Raven the power of flight, it’s Summer who first says they should accept.

“There’s probably some kind of catch, right?” Qrow asks, worrying his finger into a groove of notched wood in their tabletop. (His best guess is it’s left by one of Raven’s blades.) “It always feels that way with Oz.” 

Tai frowns, his hip propped up against the edge of the table. “I’m sure sometimes he’s honest.”

“About what he had for breakfast, maybe.” 

“I think he trusts us more than he has most people.” Summer frowns, her gaze focused mostly on Raven. “But you should only take this on if it’s something you know you want.” 

“I don’t see a downside,” Raven declares around a mouthful of whiskey. Qrow holds out his glass and she pours him another round. “If he tries to use it against us, we don’t let him.” She shrugs and refills her own glass too. “There’s four of us, and just one of him.”

Qrow takes a swig and sucks at the back of his teeth, considering carefully. “He’s got other people beside him too.” He puts the glass down to count on his fingers. “There’s James Ironwood, for one.”

“Atlas Military,” Tai elaborates, unnecessarily. “There’s a lot going on there.”

“The blonde one too. Telekinesis.” 

Summer laughs and gives Raven a nudge under the table. “You still haven’t learned her name? Really?” 

“You all know it for me so I don’t have to.” 

Qrow shrugs; she’s got a point. “Glynda does spend a lot of time in his office, but we don’t know that means she’s in the know.” 

“You’ve got an in there, don’t you?” 

He can’t quite read that look on Tai’s face, but the smile is sharper than it usually is. Qrow never told anyone, not even his own team, about what happened between him and Glynda, and she barely acknowledged him in the hallways after that except for a few short smiles shared between them. At most, she acts politely disinterested toward him. 

But that’s not what Tai sees. 

Qrow shakes his head, wanting to still sound detached and aloof from this line of questioning. “I wouldn’t say so.” 

“She seems fond of you.” 

Unless this is still about the day on the airship, all that time ago. So long, so many different days and ways they’ve fallen in and out with each other, and he still cares about something like that? 

Maybe it’s just that she was never a member of the team. 

“If she’s in, I don’t think the rest of her team is,” Raven says, offering Qrow the bottle of whiskey in case he wants to continue to pour. (He does.) “I’ve never seen them go to Ozpin’s office.” 

“For someone with as many secrets as Oz, he’s really bad at hiding things from us.” 

Summer frowns and lightly swats Qrow’s hand away from the mark in the wood. “You’re making it worse,” she mumbles, but then her expression shifts to a half-apologetic and almost tender smile. “Come on, did we make a decision?”

“We’re going to be birds,” Raven answers and finishes off the last of her glass. 

When Qrow starts to pour her another one, she waves him off. He shrugs. “Maybe from now on you keep a close eye on any nearby birds before you contemplate murdering them.”

“Try not to caw in my ear and I won’t have to kill you.” 

A single (brief) moment of silence passes before Tai cuts in. “I just need to be sure: this whole Raven killing and torturing animals thing is seriously just a joke, right?” 

As always, Raven rolls her eyes and sneers outright. “I can’t believe I sleep with you.” 

She gestures impatiently toward Qrow, demanding the bottle, before she pours herself another glass. 

“Could be I deserve that.” 

“You do,” Summer says, smiling faintly behind her hands. 

Tai throws his hands up in the air in surrender. Like everything else in this house, it all becomes easy.

*

Even being a bird is easier than it ought to be.

Qrow lands too hard a few times, but he learns, just like with anything. He has a lifetime of practice with failure and the distance to the ground when he mistakes the very end of a landing isn’t as painful as when he fell from trees. 

“Bird bodies are meant to take impact, huh?” Tai asks with a grin, watching Qrow dust himself off as he stands back up. “Funny how we keep meeting this way…”

“Am I as handsome as I was then?” Qrow is carefully casual when he tosses his hair back from his face, laughing and smiling. “Better, maybe?”

“Trick question. It assumes you were ever handsome at all.” 

But Tai winks in that way that still makes heat pool deep in Qrow’s stomach. 

Until suddenly, Raven is there, landing heavy at his side. That’s a different kind of feeling, but it’s still mostly in his stomach. “You need to work on your landings.” She pushes her own hair back out of her face with an impatient hand. “You already have so much working against you. Don’t leave the skill up to chance too.” She straightens, shoulders lifting in a way that makes Qrow think vaguely of ruffled feathers. “We have to be perfect. It’s why we were chosen.” 

He isn’t sure if she means by Oz or by the tribe, all those years ago. 

Maybe she’s not sure either, and she doesn’t stick around to answer. She lifts off into the air, wings beating hard against the wind. 

“Duty calls.” Qrow shrugs and gives Tai an especially dashing wink before he takes off. 

“Be back in time for dinner!”

*

They share their meals like they share everything else.

Each one of them learns a little something to cook, however simple, and they take turns at the fire or with the knives. Whoever doesn’t do the cooking that night helps with cleaning, although sometimes all four of them join together just to finish that little bit faster. Then they sit around and drink, telling stories about their hours apart and all the memories from their times together. 

Qrow thinks about the nights of his childhood, around a campfire, long shadows cast over his sister’s face so that it was harder to see the way that she was always frowning. Sometimes now in their simple house, with only candlelight along with their after dinner drinks, he thinks she looks the happiest she’s ever been. It’s not always a smile, not exactly, but something about her seems to almost be at rest. 

A bird that’s finally found its nest.

She helps to tend the garden with the rest of them, cultivating something meant to grow, and she never speaks about the changing of the seasons or how long she plans to be here to see the harvest.

*

Seasons and time have never been one of Raven’s favorite things.

She always accused Qrow of being the one who was so eager to leave, but the nomadic instincts are inside everyone who lived with the tribe. They never stayed in one place for more than a season or two. At least, not before Beacon.

When the frost comes in overnight, the garden is devastated, and so is Summer.

She stands in the wreckage of leaves and withering crops, turning each one of them over carefully, in search of any small survivors. 

“We can find other sources of food,” Raven tells her, impatience showing on her face and in her voice. “You don’t have to be so attached to every single thing.” 

“You could try being attached to any of them,” Summer says, speaking sharply before she can stop herself. She looks up with an instant look of sunken remorse and regret, only made worse by the way that Raven hardly seems to care. She doesn’t even flinch. “… I’m sorry.” 

“You shouldn’t apologize for the truth.” 

But it isn’t true, and all of them know it. Raven is attached, to all of them, even if it looks like she’s thinking now that she’s more like the weeds that they have to uproot than she is one of the fruits or vegetables meant to grow back every summer or spring. 

“I should apologize for hurting a friend.” 

Raven laughs, too loud and too fast, saying, “Let me know when you find one.” 

With that, she flies away. 

She won’t come back until long after dinner, but early enough to join them for one last drink.

There are no apologies — not again, not from either of them — but Summer is careful to give an extra heavy pour for Raven. She sits close to her, their knees nearly touching, and focuses (carefully) on her friend’s face. 

Maybe that’s why she doesn’t see what’s right in front of her. None of them do.

It’s only when everyone else has gone to bed, leaving him alone with his thoughts, that Qrow realizes Raven didn’t even touch her drink. 

He finishes it for her, and thinks to ask about it in the morning.

*

He doesn’t have to ask.

She tells.

“I’m going to have a baby,” Raven says, in the same tone of voice that a healer might use to tell someone you’re going to have to lose a limb. 

From the look on her face, it’s a similarly concerning thought, and Tai doesn’t look much more ready to hear it. “You’re…” He can’t even ask. The words all just die in his throat. He sits down quickly, heavily.

Qrow stands at first, moving toward his sister, but one look from her and he withers away again, stumbling back into his seat. 

Summer is the only one ready to take this in stride. “Congratulations,” she says, smoothly and carefully, just like she might straighten out a sheet. It’s the same voice Qrow’s heard her use when dealing with Oz. “I know this might not be something you looked to have happen right now, but I also know that the two of you are going to be fantastic parents.” 

Raven laughs, a sharp and unpleasant sound. Her frustration is always so jagged, like a rough edge of shattered glass slipped directly underneath his skin. Qrow curls his fingers into his palms carefully. “Sis…”

“No, it’s fine.” Raven shrugs, and her shoulders stay hovering high and tense. She looks like she’s ready to take flight at any moment. “This is what’s happening now, but we don’t need to lie to ourselves.” She gestures between herself and Tai. “Neither of us is ready for this and whatever child we have is going to suffer for it.” 

In the tribe, a child is a gift to all. The parents don’t have to be fit, because the community will raise him or her, each person offering their finest skills and talents. 

Even if the only end goal is to produce a better thief, or someone exactly like Raven.

Qrow’s sister is the ideal progeny of their people, representing all they would want any one of them to be. And now here she is, trying not to tremble with fear at the thought of another human being needing or wanting her — for more than a few hours in their bed. If this is the best of them, what was the point of anything?

“Raven.” Tai is standing now. Qrow isn’t sure when that happened exactly, but he’s there and moving closer. Or at least, he tries. Raven only retreats, so he holds his hands up in careful surrender. “Look, I’m not going to push anything with you on this. I get it. This is something you have to carry, not me, and you must be terrified.” He laughs, a soft and amused sigh. “I know I am. But this doesn’t have to change the way we all work as a team.” 

“You can’t really think that,” Raven says, without looking directly at Tai. Not even once. Her eyes are only on Summer. “Everything is different now.” 

In the end, as much as Qrow hates it, she’s right.

Everything changes after this.

*

The next summer, half the crops don’t return and one day neither does Raven.

The daughter that she leaves behind already looks so much like her, but that’s where the similarities end. She cries so easily, something Raven would never let another person see without making them suffer for it after.

Yang is too young to have developed her mother’s preoccupation with revenge, but she is also so small and vulnerable in ways that Raven never was. She holds on to Summer, desperately. 

Maybe that part is a little like Raven, though, just with more honesty.

There’s less honesty between them now, as if they're all afraid to speak. Who might break next?

Tai looks at him differently, like he can only see her looking back. There’s a distance, larger than time, and Qrow can’t blame him for it. He carries her name but so many other things too. Some days he can’t stand his own face in the mirror. He never thought that they had the same eyes, but it's all he sees now that his are often so bloodshot.

Eventually, he stops looking.

*

Sometimes Qrow sees a bird watching in the trees, and he wonders.

Has she gone all the way home to that other family? Did she ever consider taking her daughter there with her? 

Does she ever, even once, stop to think of him?

*

Yang grows up so fast. Qrow blinks and she’s as tall as his knees, tripping him up as he walks past.

She is always so eager and curious, storming through the house in search of new adventure. She laughs and grins her eager grin and he tries not to think about his sister at all. 

It’s easier on days when Yang is this happy. (He wonders if Tai feels the same.) 

He wonders, despite himself, if somewhere Raven is happy.

*

A few seasons more, and Yang has a new partner in crime to chase with her through the house — just as soon as she’s old enough to run.

The noise and chaos is constant, and for the first time Qrow thinks there might not be a place for him here anymore, in the home they had once built together. He begins looking for somewhere else, another place to be. 

“You don’t have to do this,” Summer insists, for what must be the third time today. “We’re glad to have you here, and so are the girls.” 

“You’re their favorite playmate,” Tai says, setting down his cup of coffee and taking great care not to glance — not even once — at the flask ready and waiting at Qrow’s hip. “They both like you more than me.” 

“Ruby’s too young to have opinions.” 

“And yet!” 

Summer ruffles Tai’s hair as she walks past and settles into her usual chair. “So it’s decided, right? Qrow stays, and he helps changing the baby’s diaper when we need it.” 

He sighs and settles into one of the remaining chairs left over. “Fine, alright. I don’t need the guilt.” He considers asking someone to hand him a cup of coffee, but they’re both already relaxed — exhausted after a full day of hunting and then a night spent up with Ruby — so he just drinks from the flask instead. 

It’s easy.

*

One day bleeds into the next.

Another mission from Oz, another story to unravel. He spends a lot of time talking about someone called Salem now. Maybe he was always really telling them about her, and they just didn’t know how to listen. The threats he spoke of, the great evil in the world, are starting to all sound like her. 

There is more in the world than they knew. That’s how it always is with Oz.

But this time the more is so much worse. 

Maybe it’s because of the girls back at home, but for the first time in his life Qrow feels like he actually listens. He wants and needs to be ready.

But he isn’t.

*

They keep her chair empty, long after she’s gone.

Until the day it breaks, wood snapping in Qrow’s hands as he moves it carefully aside. 

He thinks that he meant to be careful. Was he ever careful? 

Has he ever touched something — anything — and not left it worse, more broken? 

Isn’t he a thing made to break and be broken? 

Tai smiles less and Yang cries more. Ruby doesn’t know any better, doesn’t know all that she’s lost (and never will), and Qrow hates himself for how little he lets himself feel any of it.

He takes to the skies, flying for hours. He flies until the muscles ache and he feels like he might plummet straight out of the sky. 

He flies until his body is as weak as the rest of him. He pictures himself plunging toward the earth, falling and falling, without a sister to catch or to save him.

He imagines what it must have been like to be her — Summer — out and alone, knowing she would die. He pictures what it’s like to know your loved ones are going to fail you. How the disappointment had to rot inside her near the end.

He doesn’t have to imagine what it feels like to be the failure. He already knows.

*

Tai smiles less, but he’s learning how to try again. Qrow knows it’s his job to try too, that they were always meant to learn to grow together, but the flowers have all died without Summer there to watch over them.

They are not even two and two anymore. It’s just them; they’re all that’s left.

Some days, it’s not even that. Most days, it’s one and none. 

The only thing that keeps him sane are his two favorite girls, every time he goes to visit Tai. They keep growing and growing. Suddenly they’re real whole people, with personalities and differences. 

Sisters. 

The ways that they drive one another nuts and then come back around together again, collapsing into the same bed to fall asleep, reminds him of so many things forever lost. It leaves an ache in his chest that nothing can close.

But Ruby is so much her mother’s daughter. She tries to fix things that she doesn’t even have the word for. 

She crawls into Qrow’s lap one day, wide-eyed and innocent, and asks, “Uncle Qrow, what makes the flowers grow? I asked Yang, but she said it’s boring.” She huffs, clearly indignant. “I don’t think it’s boring.” 

He doesn’t know why there are tears in his eyes, threatening to fall.

No. That isn’t true.

He knows exactly why, and it’s the answer. “This might sound crazy, kiddo. But I’m pretty sure it’s love.” Ruby crinkles up her nose in disbelief, and he can’t help but laugh at the familiar expression. (It’s almost the same one Summer would wear when Raven said something especially horrifying.) “Well, it takes water too, and plenty of sunlight. But love is why it works so well.”

“That sounds fake.” 

She wriggles in his lap just enough that it nearly starts to hurt, but he allows her a few moments to get comfortable. “Yeah, I get that. A lot of real things do.” 

“Do what?” 

“They can sound made up or fake.” 

“Like stories about mom?” 

Qrow swallows past years of repressed feelings. He nods. “Yeah, like those.” 

Ruby is quiet for a moment, considering, and then, “Uncle Qrow, if the sun helps the plants, then how come it has to go away every night?” The confused frustration of childhood is written all over her face. She’s just on the verge of a thing she almost understands, but can’t quite make sense of, and it’s prickling all over her brain. “Shouldn’t the sun want to stay and help the plants grow?” 

There go those stupid tears again, ready to fall. 

He isn’t going to let them.

“Yeah,” he says, a soft sigh. “The sun should probably stick around as much as it can.” 

Ruby kicks her legs and oohs with excitement. “Can we make that happen?” 

“Kiddo, I think you and your sister can do just about anything you set your minds to.”

*

Over a decade later, Qrow watches Yang at the Vytal Festival.

She is so much like her mother in ways that frighten him. He watches as she attacks that boy, needlessly, and he knows it can’t be right. It doesn’t make sense.

But also. 

He can’t help but think of Raven and the ways that he’s failed them both.


	4. all that's left

*

Failure. It was never an option with the tribe. It shouldn’t be an option as a licensed huntsman either, but that hasn’t stopped Qrow from being a disappointment so far.

He used to think there was enough time to change anything, but now he’s not so sure. 

Time keeps pulling away from him.

He blinked and the girls were old enough to fight, to build their own weapons, to leave on their own. To make their own mistakes and suffer the consequences. Adult life is nothing but consequence on most days. Yang being framed as some kind of rampaging commando seemed like it would be the worst that things could get. 

But he was wrong.

*

Everything falls apart in a single night.

There’s screaming and chaos and fire. Grimm are everywhere and communications are down. A lot of this feels like things he’s prepared for, trained his whole life for, but somehow Qrow still wasn’t ready. But ready doesn’t matter, because he’s here now. There are no other choices. He fights until every single muscle in his body is screaming with pain, and then he keeps going. 

He bleeds, he stumbles, but he stands back up again.

Too late. Everything falls apart and then Vale itself starts to fall. Qrow has never seen James look so afraid and Ruby has never seemed as small as she does carried in his arms.

He’s never needed to speak to Oz more than he does right now, but he’s nowhere. He’s left them, whether he wanted to or not. 

Everybody leaves. Even if they don’t want to, time catches up to everyone. It’s a curse. 

He’s a curse.

Not for the first time in his life, Qrow turns and runs away.

*

Ruby looks even smaller lying there without waking.

“She’s fine,” Qrow says, not knowing that it’s true but needing it to be. 

Tai spends every hour waiting at her bedside, so Qrow brings his meals to him, even though he doesn’t really eat. 

It reminds him of the days just after Summer died. 

No matter how much he tries not to think of it, that time keeps coming back. The feeling had hung around the house like an open wound, thick and angry. 

This time, somehow, it’s worse. 

In one room, Ruby sleeps, restless and weak, looking so much like her mother did when they first met but already so much more troubled. Summer had seldom frowned this much, not even in her sleep. 

One room down the hall, Yang sits stiff and still in her bed.

She doesn’t move, she barely blinks. Qrow comes to her door and he can see her whole body tense. _What’s left of it_ , he thinks, and then hates himself for it. Not that it’s a new feeling. 

He has lots to hate himself for by now. 

But Qrow knows what it’s like to want to be left alone, so he doesn’t linger. There’s nothing he can give to Yang but time; he closes the door carefully and makes the long walk back to the kitchen to make tea for Tai. 

It’s almost a routine. Something he can pretend is normal.

The days bleed together, one into the other.

Until suddenly, Ruby’s awake. 

He can hear Tai’s joy from all the way down the hall and then Ruby’s rapid questions following after. Being out of it for a few days definitely wouldn’t stop her ceaseless curiosity; if anything, there’s more she needs to know. 

It makes sense, and without Oz around it’s down to Qrow to provide answers in the same cryptic and circular way he knows the old man would. He’s learned enough lessons about directness, after all. Too many answers can be dangerous. Summer always knew the most of any of them, and it’s obvious where that led her. 

The more Raven knew, the more she wanted to run.

But Ruby’s not the type to just stop asking once you tell her no. She needs answers, at least some of them, and she needs them now before she does something stupid. 

She’s definitely going to do something stupid.

So Qrow makes sure he’s the one to set her on the right (still stupid) path. He takes a deep drink to steady himself — even if he sways briefly into the doorframe after — and relaxes into a chair. Tai’s angry to be sent out of the room, that makes sense, but if he stuck around he might see exactly what Qrow’s doing. 

He might try to stop him from saying the name Haven before he leaves.

Because Tai still thinks he can stop things from happening. He still thinks the threats can be kept at bay just by ignoring them — the same way Raven does — but it’s obvious now that these things are always going to come. At least one student is dead, and more might come after. They’re not children anymore. 

At least this way he can watch them.

*

Tai sits at the table and stares at the notch in the wood — still there, after all these years — while Qrow tries to think of any words that would even come close to being enough.

After all these years, he’s still got nothing. 

He sits down across from Tai, away from the side that used to be Summer’s, and offers faint traces of a smile. “You look like shit.”

Tai laughs into his hands and rubs his palm against his face. “Feel like it.” He draws his hands back and squints across the table. “… you don’t look so hot yourself.” 

“And here I am well rested and feeling radiant.” Qrow pulls out his flask and holds it across the table; it’s the most that he can offer now.

But Tai just waves it away. “I’m not sleeping a lot right now.”

“Well,” Qrow says into his flask, trying not to let any of his own guilt show on his face. “Now you’ve got Ruby back.” 

He hates the way that Tai’s expression brightens. 

He sits straighter, as if a load is lifted. (Qrow feels like such a bastard.) “Yeah, I do. I really think the two of them together is going to be…” He trails off, like he’s picturing the old days. The way things used to be, back when it was simple. 

It was never really simple. 

So Qrow cuts in, before Tai’s version of make believe takes over completely, saying, “Ruby’s a smart kid. She’s going to do what needs to be done.” Maybe it’s saying too much, but it feels right to prepare Tai for what’s coming next. Even if he doesn’t understand it now. “And you know I’ll always have an eye on her.” 

Tai smiles and leans back in his chair. “Two eyes in the sky.” 

“Exactly.” 

Qrow takes another drink just to have an excuse to avert his gaze away from Tai’s. Just keep him busy for a few more hours, and he’s pretty sure Ruby will be gone or close to it. She’s her mother’s daughter, after all. 

But this time Qrow won’t let her disappear completely.

*

The benefit of trailing a pack of kids through Mistral is familiarity with the terrain. He knows exactly the way they’re going — or how they should be headed, at least, when they’re not taking detours to save innocents or act especially heroic.

Ruby is a born leader. She fits right in with any team, and can guide them as needed. 

Her influence is obvious, even at a distance. 

It’s those instincts that keep getting her so close to trouble — just like her mom — and it’s exactly that which brings Qrow out of hiding a little earlier than he’d intended. He knows he’s going to have a lot of explaining to do, and for the first time he starts to understand some of what it must have been like to be Oz for all these years. 

He’d almost say he has some sympathy for the guy. 

But only almost.

*

Even when he doesn’t travel alone, Qrow tries to spend as little time as possible around the others. His curse is through proximity and the odds get worse with time. If he stays away, it’s better for everyone, him included. The guilt can be a nightmare.

Sometimes knowing him is all it takes. 

Qrow is just conscious enough to be thinking about all of that when he starts coughing up half his lungs along with a whole lot of poison. It coats his palm and smears in the grass when he tries to stand. 

He tries, but can’t. 

He slumps back down against the rough bark of the tree and hears worried voices talking over him. The wind rustling through the leaves and the birds calling overhead sound like home. The grass is just like it was when he grew up here. The smells are familiar. 

He can see it all, just like it’s happening now.

The world swims in front of his eyes and Qrow sees his sister, the way she used to be. He sees the forest they grew up in, and long nights around the fire. He tastes the warm meals and the liquor they washed it down with. 

He sees the woman from Vale and their lunches together. Qrow feels the way it felt to have a new kind of routine.

He sees Tai, the way he used to smile, and how his mouth tasted. So many girls and boys, so many soft bodies, and how they had felt underneath or above him. The way muscle stretches under his palm and the bend of a mouth curling in pleasure. He hears it, the moans and the hot breath.

Mornings with the sunlight streaming through the windows and Raven in Tai’s bed. She looks almost at peace, the closest thing to calm he remembers seeing on her face, but only when she’s sleeping. Awake, she is restless, ready to take flight, until she does, she’s gone. 

He sees the girls when they were little, bouncing off the walls. Yang with both strong arms, shoving him until he pretended to fall. Ruby crawling onto the table or up into his lap to talk. 

She could always talk. So much to say and know about the world, and he wanted to give her all of it. (There was so much more he wanted to give.) He hears the way his heartbeat hits against his chest, fast and hard, but getting slower. 

It makes him think of music. 

The way that he and his sister used to dance at each other’s side. The way they fought like one person, how they used to feel like one person. How he could look into her eyes and feel like he was home, like he was known. 

He sways on his back, the world rocking overhead, and it feels like he can see a black streak traveling above them. “Raven,” he breathes, but there almost isn’t any sound. 

If it’s her, she doesn’t speak back. 

Not that he’s sure he would know it if she did. The words of the others wash over him like water, and he’s sinking so fast. 

He sees Summer. Wind and sunlight in her hair and a smile on her mouth. She’s going somewhere, and they can’t come. They never get to come. She’s the leader, but who follows? 

What’s left? 

“Tai,” he says, his chest heaving with painful breaths in, and that’s not the only thing that hurts. “She’s not…” 

He sees her face, flecks of blood on her lips. 

He sees.

He—

*

He doesn’t remember much other than a sense of pride. Summer — no, it’s Ruby — standing over him, after saving the day. She tells him it’s going to be alright. They’re all safe now, because of her. Her team.

She is so much like her mom. 

When the medicine finally starts kicking in, Qrow could almost miss the memories he’s leaving behind. The past hurts less somehow, from so far away. But maybe less pain isn’t what he deserves at all.

He wakes up to an unfamiliar room and feels confusion and fear before he sees Ruby’s face. This is starting to become a routine, and not the kind he finds comforting. 

“Aren’t I normally the one saving you?”

She smiles and in an instant he knows that the real world is better than his memories.

Even if parts of it are familiar in the worst ways.

*

Qrow didn’t spend a lot of time in Haven when he was very young, but as he got older it was one of the routine stops he and the other teenagers would make when they needed to find things to take. Raven loved the verticality of it. She said it reminded her of the forest, but with a whole lot more to steal.

It was easy. 

Down on the street level, you can find anyone willing to buy without asking questions. The higher up you went, the more there was to have. People up there always seemed to have so much that they might not even notice when a few things went missing. He knows the ins and outs of all those streets like the back of his hand.

Now that he’s older, Qrow comes back for different reasons, though usually it’s on assignment from Oz. 

Who still hasn’t bothered to show. 

That is, until Qrow’s all out of ideas and out of liquor too.

Always seems to be the way with Oz. He waits until you’re dying to know — either answers to the questions he dangles right ahead of you or ideas for what to do when everything seems like it’s lost — and then there he is. The hero. 

If Qrow seems resentful, maybe he is (just a bit), but he’s grateful too. He’s tired of being the one the kids turn to. 

Most of the time, he’s just tired.

*

The way that Oz talks about himself — his curse — is so familiar. Qrow thinks about what it must be like for him, or more specifically for Oscar. How he surrenders himself (his body) to someone else, to guide and to lead.

Is it really that different from how Qrow’s been most of his life? 

He gives himself over. To his tribe, his sister, his team. Hands himself up to Oz, to the alcohol, to whatever makes it easier. He’s wanted it to be easy for so long he can’t remember what it was like to resist. 

Resisting seems hard. Exhausting. 

He wonders what it’s like to be Oscar. He sees the anxiety and fear in the boy’s eyes and it’s something so familiar. Those feelings he hasn’t let himself know in so long — barely gives himself time to feel anything at all — are right there, looking back at him. 

The kid is scared. Who wouldn’t be?

Raven. Maybe Raven wouldn’t be. But probably not. 

Probably she’d be just as scared as anyone. It’s why she ran, why she took a Maiden for herself. Fear is such a strong motivator; nobody knows that better than Qrow. 

It could be fear that’s driving him now. Hard to know.

He doesn’t let himself feel anything long enough to be sure. 

It’s easiest that way.

*

When he sees Raven again, she’s standing on the wrong side instead of beside him. Maybe that’s where she’s always been, and he just never saw it.

He’s seeing things a lot clearer now. 

Family. It’s what has always mattered, but it doesn’t have to be just the one thing. He has a choice. Putting himself between the still scared (still innocent) boy and the man raging towards him, saving Oscar’s life and taking the full force of so many hits, is a choice. 

This is the family they’ll make for themselves.

When the night finally ends and they’re still standing on shaky legs, this is who they are going to be. They’ve all made their choices.

*

Family is everything, and the other kids aren’t so bad either.

They don’t trust him like they first did when Qrow joined them on the road, and that’s probably for the best. It means they’re learning the kind of skills they need to survive in a place like Atlas, once they finally make it there.

Ruby doesn’t sit in his lap anymore, but at his side. Still, she’s the one who gets through to him. 

She always has. 

But now she knows exactly what’s wrong and what to say; more and more like her mother every day.

Qrow has to try, for both of them. 

He thinks of all the people he’s failed along the way and he sets the flask aside.

*

Atlas.

It takes so long to make it there that the reality should be disappointing. That first glimpse of Mantle is definitely concerning — and familiar too, in all the wrong ways — but after those bright and smiling soldiers drag them into the back of a van and put them in cuffs (familiar again), the journey up is surprisingly pleasant. 

It’s still beautiful, even under the smothering sense of anxiety that permeates every inch of the place. No matter how much he might like certain things about James, some of the other parts of him can be dangerous too. Predictably unpredictable and ruled too much by paranoia and depression. 

It takes one to know one, is the point. 

But these kids are too smart to put their faith blindly into the hands of people just because they’re older and seem to understand what’s going on.

He wishes he had been so smart at their age.

*

There are a lot of things Qrow wishes he had done when he was younger. Choices he could have made differently or paths he could have urged them down.

Places he could have not been, so everyone else’s life would have ended up better.

He thinks about these kinds of things a lot. The alcohol used to slow his thoughts down, make things easier, but it slowed down everything else too. Even the way he knew how to feel felt different. Slower. 

He’s feeling everything now, for better or worse.

*

A lot of days, it feels like it’s better.

He’s surprised by how beautiful the sunlight is in Atlas, how it burns so bright reflected against the snow. It makes him think of being younger, climbing trees and still finding new things all the time that you didn’t know about already. (He tries not to think about what’s missing at his side.) 

Sometimes he just stands alone in the sunlight and breathes in deeply. 

It could be that it looks stupid, but he doesn’t even care. When he turns his head, he sees someone new standing just there, right at his side. 

Clover smiles more easily than Raven ever did; it makes Qrow think of how Tai used to be. 

“You alright there, partner?” 

No one’s called him that in a very long time. 

No one’s asked that either, not while meaning it the way that Clover seems to. 

It makes Qrow stop to really consider his answer. “Yeah, I guess I am.” 

“You sound surprised.” 

“I guess I’m that too.” 

Clover moves closer, all perfect posture and blinding white smile. “A surprise can be nice every once in a while, right?”

Qrow finds himself staring, a little longer than he needs to. 

Maybe it’s the glare of the sun. 

“… yeah.” He breathes in and out, slow and steady. “I think it might be.”

“Come on.” Clover walks away, but glances back to make sure that Qrow follows. “It’s just you and me today.”

The rest of the Ace Ops and the kids must be off on other assignments. He trusts them, of course, and all of them are adults now with licenses of their own. It’s not his responsibility to keep them alive anymore, and it’s never been something he’s especially good at. 

He needs to not worry, but he does, and it probably shows on his face because Clover reacts by slowing down and calling back, “They’ll be fine, I swear it.”

“Yeah, of course.” Qrow picks up his pace, hurrying to catch back up. “I know that.”

There are a lot of things he knows that he’s still relearning how to feel, now that he feels so much. The fear is louder now, but somehow the guilt has almost got quiet. 

Funny how that works, when the liquor had always been what kept it away before.

*

Qrow hasn’t had a team in so long.

The fear that never used to exist — the ways he tried to be more like his sister — settled onto him sometime long ago. It became a part of him, buried deep in his bones. 

Fear for those he loves and their stupid mortality. 

The thing is that when he’s alone, he isn’t afraid, not for himself. 

It’s easy to see what that means. 

But Clover doesn’t seem to be afraid of anything, and it’s different from how it ever was with Raven. His bravery is selfless and self-assured. None of his edges are as sharp. He is firm, but it’s resolved instead of rough. 

He’s kind. 

In ways Qrow can barely remember knowing in someone before, he is so kind. 

“If you find the time, I was hoping you could train a little with my team.” 

“You think I need the practice?” 

Clover smiles and chuckles, shaking his head. “No, I think we could learn a little something from you. You have a unique skillset, and it can always help to stretch our abilities.” 

Qrow doesn’t even know what to do with this kind of direct and unflinching praise. “… sure.” He remembers being cockier before, constantly swaggering and smirking, but he feels too tired for any of that lately. Maybe that wasn’t who he was anymore, and hadn’t been for years; it could have been the alcohol, holding onto an imprint of the boy he lost so long ago. “I’d like that.”

*

They take a transport vehicle by themselves, no driver or other Atlas military personnel.

“Do you mind?” Clover asks, before slipping into the driver’s seat. “Some of these can be a beast to handle, and I’ve been dealing with them for years.” He turns the engine on and smiles. “It’s the cold weather. It damages some of the internals, and we don’t have the available resources to focus on these kinds of repairs.”

“Not when we’re so focused on the Arena.” Qrow nods and settles back. “I get that.” He glances at the distance between them. It’s a smaller front seat than he’s used to, laid out as a single bench. Qrow blinks and notices that Clover’s looking back at him, so he quickly redirects his focus outside the window. “I could ask Ruby if she’s got time to look at it.” He frowns at the snow as they start speeding off. He’s not annoyed, not exactly. He doesn’t really know what he is. “She’s always been good with mechanical things.” 

Clover chuckles and the engine jolts, almost right on cue. It recovers quickly — faster than Qrow. “I’ll keep it in mind. But you might not want to offer too much of her time.” He drops silent as he focuses on directing the car down a winding road that eventually leads to the old mines. “Things are only going to get busier right now.”

“James is worried about time, I guess.”

Clover doesn’t answer at first — the only sound is the whirring of the wheels against the snow — but then, softly, he says, “You and Ironwood seem to know each other pretty well.” 

“Oh, well.” Qrow shrugs and the movement causes friction against the seat. His shoulders squeak. “Yeah, I guess it’s been a while.” He chuckles. “We’re both getting old.”

The way Clover laughs, low and deep in his chest, the sound blends in with the rumble of the engine. It’s a soft purring sound. “You definitely don’t look old.” The way that Clover smiles is so unique to his own face. The mouth hooks in a specific way, tilted down into a soft line. “You have to know that.” 

Qrow blinks and looks back at the road. “It’s all the exercise, I guess.” He laughs, and the sound rattles around in his own chest. “Not as much as you, I bet.” 

“Oh?”

He looks back over at Clover — those broad shoulders, those arms — and realizes he’s been caught looking again. Better to just hold the eye contact now; looking away would only seem guilty of something. “I mean, yeah. I’ve got eyes.” 

“You do.” 

In the past, Qrow thinks he might have winked at the end there, but something stops him. Maybe it’s just the fact that they’re stuck together in a car for the next hour or so, but something about this makes him not want to treat it as a game. 

Instead, he smiles, a feeling as soft as the curl of Clover’s mouth. “And your eyes aren’t so bad either.” 

Clover chuckles and nods, and his hands flex against the steering wheel. “Thank you.” He drums his thumbs and glances back over at Qrow. “That’s how you accept a compliment, you know. If you needed an example.” 

Qrow laughs. It’s a real, grateful and amused laugh, even as he turns his head away to consider the snowfall. “Oh, shut up.”

*

But Clover doesn’t shut up.

Qrow half-expects them to travel in silence the rest of the way, but Clover always has more questions or compliments. He always has more to say about and to Qrow. Endless questions and curiosity. 

“Since you work alone so much, I’d guess you’ve learned how to cook,” Clover says without any preamble. 

Right before this, they’d been discussing weapon maintenance. 

Qrow doesn’t mind the way the conversation moves; it makes him feel socially limber in a way he hasn’t been in years. “I’ve known how since I was a kid, actually. Now it’s mostly things that reheat well on a fire.” He shrugs, drumming his fingers against the side of the door as a means of releasing some of his fidgety energy. “Why?” 

“I thought maybe it was a fun thing we could do,” Clover says, as careless as anything else. “If you’re free one night.” In the pause that follows, Qrow can only hear his own heart beating. Nothing else. There isn’t anything else, except the glint of sunlight on the snow. The quiet is long enough that Clover must sense the uncertainty — the stupid inability to speak at all — so he fills it, gently, with more casual statements. “Maybe we can exchange recipes.” 

“That sounds…” It sounds terrifying, impossible, and so very nice too. “Like a great idea.” The words come out easily; it’s been so long since anything was easy. “I could always use more recipes.” 

“So it’s a date.” 

Qrow’s hand instinctively clutches at the door handle, but he has the presence of mind not to open it and send himself sprawling out into the snow, never to be heard from again. 

Although that might be less embarrassing than the frozen look of terror stuck on his face now. “Oh.” He breathes. “Okay.” 

“How’s two days from now sound?”

“Like a date,” Qrow says, his voice higher than it usually is. He clears his throat and feels his voice hiccup over the next few heavy (hard) heartbeats. He almost feels like he’s choking. “See, because it’s… a day of the week. That kind of a date.” 

Clover smiles at him, open and easy. “Yeah, I get it.” He looks back at the road. “You’re funny.”

The high and light feeling that settles over Qrow’s chest and buzzes in his ears lingers for the next few hours. It’s a good thing their assignment’s so easy, because Qrow’s just not sure he could hear commands called out to him from a distance. 

But maybe so. He thinks maybe his ears would be able to focus on Clover’s voice.

*

He should be worried about this. He knows it.

But he’s not. 

For the first time in a long time, he isn’t afraid.

*

At training the next morning, Qrow almost can’t focus on the kids and their attempts to overpower each other. The distraction must be there on his face, obvious, because suddenly Ruby’s standing right beside him, swaying from one foot to the other.

“Uncle Qrow?” She straightens, carefully brushing down her skirt, as if to add to the appearance of her height. “Can we talk?”

“Yeah, of course.” 

Ruby points out a spot in the bleachers and hurries ahead. Qrow follows, careful not to glance back to see who’s noticed the departure. That’d be stupid. 

The kids (mostly) respect him and won’t think anything of a quick talk between Uncle and niece. 

So why is he suddenly worried?

Could be it’s the look on Ruby’s face, so earnest and concerned. She’s had a lot on her mind lately, that’s a given, but this feels more directed, and he hasn’t seen her look at him this way since they got to Atlas. 

He sits beside her, and at least she doesn’t flinch away. “What’s up, kiddo?” 

“I’m not sure I know how to say this, actually.” Ruby bites her lip and fidgets in her seat. “Kind of funny, I guess. I know how to say most things — like a lot of things, constantly, all the time — but some things are hard.” She blinks and looks at him, like she _really_ looks, and he holds still. Lets her see whatever she needs. “… I want you to know how proud I am, Uncle Qrow. We both are, Yang and I. And everyone else would be too, I think, if you were the kind of person who let them in.”

That’s not what he was expecting. Not at all. “… proud.” 

“Of the progress you’ve made with everything.” Ruby shrugs, her shoulders feeling stiff. “You took everything we talked about to heart, and you’re starting to be like you were in all your stories.” She laughs, a slightly high and maybe manic sound. “I guess I never knew the real you before. You’ve always been fun and of course I’ve always loved you, but this is even better. Like making a new best friend, who’s also my Uncle. And I’m sure it’s hard, especially with everything going on, so—”

“Isn’t all of this supposed to be my line?”

Ruby takes a deep breath, like she’s readying herself for another monologue of praise. “You shouldn’t do that. You should take a compliment and not try to undermine it. It’s rude, actually.” 

Qrow lets out a startled laugh. How familiar is that? “You’re not the only person who’s told me that lately.” 

“Yeah, well you should listen to them, because they sound smart.” Ruby bumps against him with her hip. “Almost as smart as I am, huh?” She pauses, looking back out at the assembled teams, all of them doing their best. He looks too, considering the arena and its terrain and all the ways to overcome it or how to conquer the people inside. It’s hard to turn that tactics brain off, especially after so many years. He’s so focused on his thoughts that he’s startled when Ruby speaks again, saying, “And was that someone else Clover?”

Qrow turns his head sharply. Too sharply.

He’s very bad at this. “Who?”

So bad. 

Ruby looks entirely unimpressed too. “Head of the Ace Ops who’s standing a couple feet away and grinning at you.”

“Oh, him?” Qrow clears his throat and feels himself start to sweat. He wants to look, but doesn’t. “Well, yes. Maybe.” 

“Maybe?”

“It definitely was him.” 

Ruby nods and thankfully stops giving Qrow that unimpressed and vaguely impatient look that says she’s too smart to be in the middle of a conversation that should have already ended. “I’m happy for you two. I hope it’s alright for me to say that. It’s already so exhausting pretending not to know anything really about Yang and Blake, so—”

“Yang and Blake?”

There’s that look again, and this time she’s squinting. “Do old people just not see the same things we see? Is it a focus thing?” 

“Okay, I’m not that old.” 

“I didn’t think so either, really, but now I have concerns.” 

Qrow reaches over to ruffle her hair, gently pushing her head from side to side until she laughs and swats at his hand. “You’re as much of a pain in my neck as your old man sometimes.” 

“See, but that’s the thing, right? If he’s my _old man_ and he’s almost exactly the same age as you, then—” Qrow reaches to give her a full on noogie this time or maybe put her into an entirely friendly headlock, but Ruby’s too fast. She shatters into petals and streaks just far enough away to escape, landing on her feet. “Because you can see that you’re slow, right?” 

“What do you even get out of this besides bullying the elderly?” 

“Amusement?” 

Qrow isn’t sure when his other niece decided to join the conversation, but now he’s definitely getting ganged up on. “You stay out of it, Yang.” He points at her. “I’m still fast enough to take you.” 

She hoists herself up onto the railing that separates the seats from the main stadium, one leg dangling over either side. “Fast, sure, but I wouldn’t bet on whether you can take me.” She grins and swings her legs. “So what are you two talking about?”

Ruby stands up extra straight and tall. “Nothing! And no one.” She gives Qrow a very obvious and panic stricken look and then snaps her gaze right back to Yang. “I was just telling Uncle Qrow what a great job he’s doing.” 

“With…” 

“Life!” 

Part of that is true at least, but it’s also another pretty big reminder that Ruby didn’t inherit her mother’s skill with deception. It’s no wonder that lying to Ironwood is stressing her out so much. 

“Yeah, Ruby here was just telling me how good I am at life.” 

Yang wrinkles her nose, clearly unconvinced, but she doesn’t look interested in pushing. “Okay.” She shrugs and swings both legs around to their side before vaulting down. “But seriously, do you want to fight me?” She pauses. “Like, as a part of training, not because your life’s going so great and I’m jealous.” 

“Hey, you could be.”

Yang grins, hands on hips. “But I’m really not, though.” 

Qrow has actually noticed some of what’s happening there between Yang and Blake, even if putting any kind of name to it hasn’t seemed like it’s part of his business. He knows enough to be sure that Yang’s telling the truth; she wouldn’t trade her life for anything right now. 

“Come on.” Qrow stands and rolls the stiffness out of his shoulders. “You two can try ganging up on me out there, and we’ll see who the old man is.” 

“It’s still you, like mathematically.”

*

Between the two of them, Qrow is a little overwhelmed, but he holds his own alright. If you ask him, at least, it’s not so bad.

The fact that Clover was watching the entire time has absolutely nothing to do with it.

Those kids still need to be reminded to respect their elders, even if they don’t always trust or believe in them. Something like that.

Like a lot of things, it probably sounds better in his head than it would out loud.

*

A lot of things work better in theory than in practice.

He recognizes the rapid footsteps approaching behind him even before he turns. Winter Schnee has a distinctive (agitated) gait. “Specialist Schnee.” Qrow turns toward her with a smile ready on his face and a cocky tilt of his head. “Were you looking for me?” 

Even that might play better inside his own brain than it does in person.

She doesn’t seem impressed, but she doesn’t seem as annoyed with (only) him as she normally is. She’s even paler than usual, and her breathing is irregular, despite all her efforts to hide it. 

She straightens her posture, and Qrow mirrors it. He lets the smugness slip from his face and shifts into something more open and receptive. Ready to listen. 

“Something wrong?” he asks, his voice carefully neutral and professional. 

He’s taking this seriously now and he wants her to know it. 

She inclines her head in return, a gesture of appreciation more than a nod, even if she’s in agreement. “A lot of things are going wrong right now, Qrow. You might have noticed.” 

“And the latest one?”

“My father.” Winter swallows and looks ready to say more, but she falters.

She clears her throat, floundering, and Qrow cuts in to give her more time, saying, “That’s not new. From what I can tell, he’s been a problem for as long as anyone I care to speak to has known him.” 

“Since when do you care to speak to me?” 

He holds his hands up. “Hey, come on. Don’t take whatever it is out on me.” He crosses his arms, settling into a more traditional posture for their interactions; maybe she’ll find that easier to deal with. “Out with it, Schnee.”

“He’s invited us — most of us, at least — to a dinner at the manor.” 

“Dinner,” Qrow repeats stupidly.

“Yes, just days from now.” 

Somehow he knows, even before looking at the invitation, that it’s going to be the same night he’s made plans with Clover. 

That’d just be his (bad) luck. 

Qrow’s mind is whirring, working in overtime, and it shows on his face. He knows, because Winter looks concerned, like she’s considering what it could all mean. 

Probably she thinks it’s something a lot more disastrous than having to reschedule a dinner, so Qrow needs to say something. Fast. 

“He’s up to something,” is what he says, so obvious that it’s entirely pointless, but Winter nods. 

Having something to be right about actually seems to relax her somewhat. “He always is.” Even her sighs are short and direct. “Never mind. We have to attend, or it will only be worse for us.” She looks him up and down, considering, and then adds, “You wouldn’t have been my first choice for this, obviously, but you’re the first person that I saw.”

“I’m flattered.”

“Could you notify your team, please. All except for—”

She cuts herself off. Qrow allows her a few moments, in case she wants to pick it back up, before he asks, “Except?” 

“My sister,” Winter practically breathes the word. There’s a whole story there, in those three syllables. “I’d like to talk to her myself.” 

It’s not Qrow’s place to ask, or to even tell her that he understands. 

He doesn’t, not really, but this is the most Winter has ever made sense to him. 

Sisters. 

He gets it — even without knowing what it is. “Yeah, sure. I’ll leave Weiss to you.” He hesitates, unsure whether or not to say more, but delicacy has seldom been his strong point. “She’s a good kid, you know.” 

Winter’s lips purse defensively. “Of course I know.”

So the wrong choice then. The smart play would be to drop it.

But then brains have seldom been his strong point either. “I know what it’s like to worry about family.” He notices the way Winter’s shoulders tense, but doesn’t falter (for long). “But you don’t have to with Weiss. She’s got a great head on her shoulders and an even better heart. So…” 

He waves his hand vaguely, like he might be able to grab hold of the point he’s trying to make and stick it back into the center of his sentence. 

No such luck. 

The way Winter cuts in, you’d think she’s taking pity on him. “I appreciate you saying so.” 

From the look on her face, Qrow might actually think that’s exactly what happened. That Winter appreciated something he said just enough to feel sympathy. 

Atlas itself might be starting to melt at this rate. 

“Now if you’ll excuse me.” Winter steps to the side and carries on down the hall, calling (somehow sharply) over her shoulder as she goes. “I have a dinner party to dread for the next thirty-two hours.”

*

Apparently the party isn’t meant to be any kind of a formal occasion.

“Too bad,” Qrow says, carefully adjusting his jacket. “I clean up okay.” 

Yang slows her walk toward the cars and squints. “… you do?” She looks him up and down quickly. “Do you even use soap?”

“Alright, knock it off, kid, or I’ll have to kick your ass again.” 

“Wouldn’t you have to win a first time?” She shifts her weight from side to side, a lazy boxer’s stance. It doesn’t even feel deliberate, just unspent energy bubbling underneath the surface. “Is this another one of those old age things?”

Blake giggles into her hand, her ears twitching fondly in Yang’s direction.

Yeah, okay. He’s got it now. 

Qrow rolls his eyes and gestures to the middle transport vehicle. “Kids in the center, adults in the rear.”

“That sounds—”

“In!”

*

The dinner goes just about as you’d expect, at least from where Qrow is standing. The kids cause a ruckus, the talk with Jacques Schnee is a disaster, and most of the other dinner guests now look a lots less pleased than they were when their core group arrived.

All in all, it feels like a success. 

It’s the kind of night that Qrow might normally want to celebrate with a drink, but he’s already turned one away. It felt good, actually. Saying no to something and realizing he really didn’t want it the way that he used to. 

Even better is thinking maybe he wants other things, however faintly. 

Having so many feelings competing for his attention now means it’s going to take some sorting through to know which ones are real or what they mean, but it’s okay. Even with the mess of all their plans and some potential world ending consequences always looming, for the first time in a long time he feels like he has time.

Qrow’s thinking about his days in future tenses. 

He walks out to the patio — marble pillars and ostentatious floor length curtains at the doorway — and tries not to think about all the things he hates about Jacques Schnee. He focuses instead on the landscape. 

The sun is set, but Atlas is still beautiful, in its own way. 

“Food for your thoughts?”

That voice. 

It’s been such a brief time, but already Qrow feels like there’s a place for it inside him. He hears it and he turns, already eager to smile. It’s easy in the way it ought to be. “What’s that?” 

Clover holds up a plate loaded down with finger food. All of it looks absurdly expensive. It actually glistens in the moonlight. “Food, see?” He smiles and draws closer, offering Qrow first dibs on the plate. “In exchange for conversation.” 

“You sure got the raw end of that deal.” 

“No,” Clover answers easily, watching Qrow’s face with a friendly smile. Maybe he expects him to blush or look away — because a couple of days ago, he probably would have — but Qrow holds that look for just as long. He likes the way that Clover’s smile grows even bigger before he’s the first to break, looking back down at the food. “I think all of this is pretty well cooked.” 

Qrow picks the first item on the plate he thinks he can identify. It’s a pork thing, probably. 

He takes a bite. “A comedian!” 

Clover grabs one of the same. “Thank you. I do try my best.” 

“More like try my patience.” There’s a brief and startled look that crosses Clover’s face, which causes Qrow instant regret. He reaches out for the other man’s wrist — feels his pulse beating hard — but quickly releases it again. “… sorry. Bad joke.”

Clover shakes his head. He steps closer and threads his fingers with Qrow’s — a whole lot more direct than just a hand on a wrist. “You’re deflecting again.” One squeeze, and he lets go. He relents, for now. “I owe you a dinner.” Clover waves at the plate again and then gestures to an empty stone stairway just a little further down the walkway. “If you’ll have me.” 

Just here, just now, there are a million reasons Qrow knows this is a bad idea.

But he just doesn’t care. 

“Sure,” he says, taking the lead. 

He looks back and sees Clover smiling. He’s always smiling, and Qrow realizes that he always likes it. “You know, we might not have a lot of time to hang around. Jacques could be tossing us out any minute.” 

“I’d count on it.” 

Clover hands off the plate first before sitting gingerly. “So get to talking.” 

There are so many options that it’s almost overwhelming. It feels like some kind of sick metaphor for his life, or at least how it used to be. Qrow sits close, but Clover moves even closer. He pretends not to notice. “I’m not sure where to start.” 

“Family,” Clover says around another mouthful of something. (This time it’s slightly pink.) “That’s always a good place to start.” 

Family is everything, and the fact that Clover knows that speaks well of him. 

So why does the question make something inside of Qrow’s chest feel tense? He takes the plate back and pokes around, buying himself added time by stuffing something into his mouth to chew it slowly. 

Clover hesitates, studying his face. “It wasn’t meant to be a trick question.”

“Yeah,” Qrow mumbles around a mouthful before he swallows. “Yeah, I know.” He wipes his mouth with the back of his hand and feels his other palm gripping his knees almost reflexively. Just something to hold onto. “Family’s complicated, right?”

From the corner of his eye, he sees Clover take the plate. 

He sets it aside. 

“It can be.” 

Qrow breathes out, long and slow. “I guess it doesn’t have to be.”

“Yeah.” Clover smiles one of his encouraging smiles and his hand is suddenly on Qrow’s shoulder. “It can be easy.”

He’s right. 

Suddenly the tension melts right out of Qrow, like a warmth spreading directly from that single touch. He sinks slowly into the thought of it — something else being easy again — and knows the answer, just like that. “You’ve met them already. Most of them.” He gestures at the building behind him and smiles at nothing in particular or maybe everything all at once — a million different memories combined. “They’re good kids.”

Clover’s palm flexes against his shoulder and he turns to look at him. The smile that’s waiting for him is even softer than usual, like he’s edging into what he says next. “You’re good too, you know. For them and just—”

“Yeah, I know.”

Qrow answers before the question’s even finished, so he doesn’t have time to dodge or deflect. None of those old instincts can kick in if he doesn’t have any time to think.

It makes Clover laugh. “See, you’re learning.”

He likes that laugh, and wants to hear it again. 

He wants, in future tense. “What can I say? Adaptability kind of runs in the family.” 

Except that it didn’t. Raven could never change, never move past things. Even if the tribe was always moving, that didn’t make them flexible. But the others are. 

When Qrow answers he’s thinking of Ruby, Yang, and all their friends, but especially of Summer. He’s thinking about the people who taught him change and growth. 

Things don’t have to stay static, not even lines and definitions. 

People aren’t that way either. 

Looking out at the cold white of Atlas, he can’t help but think of Summer and sunlight. “How do you feel about plants?” he asks suddenly, with no preamble.

The laugh from Clover is gentle and fond instead of sneering. 

Qrow turns his head, and there’s that smile waiting for him. “I promise,” he breathes, wanting to believe this is true of everything still ahead. “There’s no right or wrong answer.”

*

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> **1.** As is so often the case, [sbrn10](https://archiveofourown.org/users/sbrn10) did beta work on this for me as well as brainstorming. She provided some harsh truths and helpful insights. Fic wouldn’t have happened without her, at all.
> 
>  **2.** Thank you to [Sel](https://catalyswitch.tumblr.com/) for constant encouragement but especially for coming up with the semblances for the Vytal Festival when I was running really dry creatively. 
> 
> **3.** Merry Christmas to [mermaiddrunk](https://archiveofourown.org/users/mermaiddrunk). I did my very best to do your favorite boy justice, with some (very) brief bees on the side. I hope you enjoyed it!


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